Das Swagata, Pal Uttam, Saha-Dasgupta Tanusri, Leong Susanna
Food, Chemical and Biotechnology Cluster, Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore 138683, Singapore.
Technical Research Centre, S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata 700106, India.
ACS Appl Bio Mater. 2025 Sep 15;8(9):7672-7683. doi: 10.1021/acsabm.5c00474. Epub 2025 May 21.
Microbial invasion and subsequent fuel biocontamination have long posed significant challenges, leading to a significant infrastructural damage. The lack of systematic data on the correlation between environmental parameters and microbial growth has hampered the development of targeted solutions to date. To address this challenge, this study reports a targeted strategy to inactivate and control the proliferation of commonly identified fuel-contaminating microbial clusters through the development of synthetic peptides that can be delivered directly to fuel samples. From a library of short peptides which was designed based on the indolicidin template peptides, three unique sequences were found to have good broad-spectrum activity toward a range of microbes such as , , and , with P17, showing the highest killing potential. The structural analyses of the peptides based on circular dichroism spectroscopy revealed the helical propensity of the peptides in SDS micelles and a random flexible structure in solution. The peptides showed stability under biological conditions and minimal cytotoxicity against mammalian cells. This study presents an innovative method to effectively address fuel biocontamination using short peptides coupled with a potentially scalable protocol to administer the peptides to fuel samples.
长期以来，微生物入侵及随后的燃料生物污染带来了重大挑战，导致严重的基础设施损坏。迄今为止，由于缺乏关于环境参数与微生物生长之间相关性的系统数据，阻碍了针对性解决方案的开发。为应对这一挑战，本研究报告了一种靶向策略，即通过开发可直接递送至燃料样品的合成肽，来灭活和控制常见的燃料污染微生物簇的增殖。从基于吲哚杀菌肽模板肽设计的短肽文库中，发现三个独特序列对一系列微生物如 、 和 具有良好的广谱活性，其中P17表现出最高的杀伤潜力。基于圆二色光谱的肽结构分析揭示了肽在SDS胶束中的螺旋倾向以及在溶液中的随机柔性结构。这些肽在生物学条件下表现出稳定性，并且对哺乳动物细胞的细胞毒性最小。本研究提出了一种创新方法，可使用短肽有效解决燃料生物污染问题，并结合一种潜在可扩展的方案将肽施用于燃料样品。
