Singh Karuna, Rani Jyoti
Department of Zoology (MMV), Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, 221005, India.
Probiotics Antimicrob Proteins. 2016 Jun;8(2):85-101. doi: 10.1007/s12602-016-9212-3.
Emerging drug resistance varieties and hyper-virulent strains of microorganisms have compelled the scientific fraternity to develop more potent and less harmful therapeutics. Antimicrobial peptides could be one of such therapeutics. This review is an attempt to explore antifungal peptides naturally produced by prokaryotes as well as eukaryotes. They are components of innate immune system providing first line of defence against microbial attacks, especially in eukaryotes. The present article concentrates on types, structures, sources and mode of action of gene-encoded antifungal peptides such as mammalian defensins, protegrins, tritrpticins, histatins, lactoferricins, antifungal peptides derived from birds, amphibians, insects, fungi, bacteria and their synthetic analogues such as pexiganan, omiganan, echinocandins and Novexatin. In silico drug designing, a major revolution in the area of therapeutics, facilitates drug development by exploiting different bioinformatics tools. With this view, bioinformatics tools were used to visualize the structural details of antifungal peptides and to predict their level of similarity. Current practices and recent developments in this area have also been discussed briefly.
微生物新出现的耐药品种和高毒力菌株促使科学界开发更有效且危害更小的治疗方法。抗菌肽可能就是这类治疗方法之一。本综述旨在探索原核生物和真核生物天然产生的抗真菌肽。它们是先天免疫系统的组成部分，为抵御微生物攻击提供第一道防线，尤其是在真核生物中。本文重点关注基因编码的抗真菌肽的类型、结构、来源和作用方式，如哺乳动物防御素、protegrins、tritrpticins、组蛋白、乳铁传递蛋白、源自鸟类、两栖动物、昆虫、真菌、细菌的抗真菌肽及其合成类似物，如pexiganan、omiganan、棘白菌素和Novexatin。计算机辅助药物设计是治疗领域的一项重大变革，通过利用不同的生物信息学工具促进药物开发。基于此观点，使用生物信息学工具来可视化抗真菌肽的结构细节并预测它们的相似程度。还简要讨论了该领域的当前实践和最新进展。
