Laboratório de Espectrometria de Massa, Embrapa Recursos Genéticos e Biotecnologia, 70770-917, Brasília, DF, Brazil.
Departamento de Biologia Celular, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade de Brasília, 70910-900, Brasília, DF, Brazil.
Sci Rep. 2017 Oct 16;7(1):13263. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-13685-6.
Examples of bioactive peptides derived from internal sequences of proteins are known for decades. The great majority of these findings appear to be fortuitous rather than the result of a deliberate and methodological-based enterprise. In the present work, we describe the identification and the biological activities of novel antimicrobial peptides unveiled as internal fragments of various plant proteins founded on our hypothesis-driven search strategy. All putative encrypted antimicrobial peptides were selected based upon their physicochemical properties that were iteratively selected by an in-house computer program named Kamal. The selected peptides were chemically synthesized and evaluated for their interaction with model membranes. Sixteen of these peptides showed antimicrobial activity against human and/or plant pathogens, some with a wide spectrum of activity presenting similar or superior inhibition efficacy when compared to classical antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). These original and previously unforeseen molecules constitute a broader and undisputable set of evidences produced by our group that illustrate how the intragenic concept is a workable reality and should be carefully explored not only for microbicidal agents but also for many other biological functions.
几十年来，人们已经知道许多来源于蛋白质内部序列的生物活性肽。这些发现绝大多数似乎是偶然的，而不是经过深思熟虑和基于方法的探索的结果。在本工作中，我们描述了根据我们的假设驱动搜索策略，从各种植物蛋白内部片段发现的新型抗菌肽的鉴定和生物学活性。所有假定的加密抗菌肽都是根据其理化性质选择的，这些性质是由我们内部的计算机程序 Kamal 迭代选择的。选择的肽被化学合成并评估它们与模型膜的相互作用。其中 16 种肽对人和/或植物病原体具有抗菌活性，其中一些具有广谱活性，与经典抗菌肽 (AMPs) 相比具有相似或更高的抑制效果。这些原始的和以前未曾预料到的分子构成了我们小组提供的更广泛和无可争议的证据集，说明了基因内概念是如何成为可行的现实，不仅应该仔细探索用于杀菌剂，而且还应该用于许多其他生物学功能。
