Effect of Peptides on the Synthesis, Properties and Wound Healing Capacity of Silver Nanoparticles

The aim of this study is the synthesis of novel peptide-silver nanoparticle conjugates with enhanced wound healing capacity. Peptide-silver nanoparticle conjugates were synthesized using myristoyl tetrapeptide 6 (MT6) or copper tripeptide 1 (CuTP1). Peptide-free silver nanoparticles (AgNP) were synthesized using NaBH4 and sodium citrate and were used as control. The addition of the peptides during or after the synthesis of nanoparticles and its impact on the properties of the synthesized peptide-silver nanoparticle conjugates were assessed. The monitoring of the synthesis of nanoparticles was achieved using ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometry (UV-/Vis). The characteristics and colloidal stability of the nanoparticles (size and ζ-potential distribution, morphology, composition and structure) were monitored using dynamic laser scattering (DLS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The wound healing capacity of the peptide-silver nanoparticle conjugates was assessed using scratch test assay on fibroblasts (NIH/3T3). The results indicated that the addition of the peptides during the synthesis of nanoparticles lead to better yield of the reaction and more effective capping while the size distribution and ζ-potential of the conjugates indicated long-term colloidal stability. The MT6-AgNP conjugate exhibited 71.97 ± 4.35% wound closure, which was about 5.48-fold higher (p < 0.05) than the corresponding free MT6. The CuTP1-AgNP conjugate exhibited 62.37 ± 18.33% wound closure that was better by 2.82 fold (p < 0.05) compared to the corresponding free CuTP1. Both peptides led to the synthesis of silver nanoparticle conjugates with enhanced wound healing capacity compared to the respective free peptide or to the peptide-free AgNP (29.53 ± 4.71% wound closure, p < 0.05). Our findings demonstrated that the synthetized peptide-silver nanoparticle conjugates are promising ingredients for wound care formulation.

Nanomedicine for drug resistant pathogens and COVID-19 using mushroom nanocomposite inspired with bacteriocin – A Review

Multidrug resistant (MDR) pathogens have become a major global health challenge and have severely threatened the health of society. Current conditions have gotten worse as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and infection rates in the future will rise. It is necessary to design, respond effectively, and take action to address these challenges by investigating new avenues. In this regard, the fabrication of metal NPs utilized by various methods, including green synthesis using mushroom, is highly versatile, cost-effective, eco-compatible, and superior. In contrast, biofabrication of metal NPs can be employed as a powerful weapon against MDR pathogens and have immense biomedical applications. In addition, the advancement in nanotechnology has made possible to modify the nanomaterials and enhance their activities. Metal NPs with biomolecules composite to prevents their microbial adhesion and kills the microbial pathogens through biofilm formation. Bacteriocin is an excellent antimicrobial peptide that works well as an augmentation substance to boost the antimicrobial effects. As a result, we concentrate on the creation of new, eco-compatible mycosynthesized metal NPs with bacteriocin nanocomposite via electrostatic, covalent, or non-covalent bindings. The synergistic benefits of metal NPs with bacteriocin to combat MDR pathogens and COVID-19, as well as other biomedical applications, are discussed in this review. Moreover, the importance of the adverse outcome pathway (AOP) in risk analysis of manufactured metal nanocomposite nanomaterial and their future possibilities also discussed.

iATP: A Sequence Based Method for Identifying Anti-tubercular Peptides

Background:

Tuberculosis is one of the biggest threats to human health. Recent studies have demonstrated that anti-tubercular peptides are promising candidates for the discovery of new anti-tubercular drugs. Since experimental methods are still labor intensive, it is highly desirable to develop automatic computational methods to identify anti-tubercular peptides from the huge amount of natural and synthetic peptides. Hence, accurate and fast computational methods are highly needed.

Methods and Results:

In this study, a support vector machine based method was proposed to identify anti-tubercular peptides, in which the peptides were encoded by using the optimal g-gap dipeptide compositions. Comparative results demonstrated that our method outperforms existing methods on the same benchmark dataset. For the convenience of scientific community, a freely accessible web-server was built, which is available at http://lin-group.cn/server/iATP.

Conclusion:

It is anticipated that the proposed method will become a useful tool for identifying anti-tubercular peptides.

A review on anti-tuberculosis peptides: Impact of peptide structure on anti-tuberculosis activity

Antibiotic resistance is a major public health problem globally. Particularly concerning amongst drug-resistant human pathogens is Mycobacterium tuberculosis that causes the deadly infectious tuberculosis (TB) disease. Significant issues associated with current treatment options for drug-resistant TB and the high rate of mortality from the disease makes the development of novel treatment options against this pathogen an urgent need. Antimicrobial peptides are part of innate immunity in all forms of life and could provide a potential solution against drug-resistant TB. This review is a critical analysis of antimicrobial peptides that are reported to be active against the M tuberculosis complex exclusively. However, activity on non-TB strains such as Mycobacterium avium and Mycobacterium intracellulare, whenever available, have been included at appropriate sections for these anti-TB peptides. Natural and synthetic antimicrobial peptides of diverse sequences, along with their chemical structures, are presented, discussed, and correlated to their observed antimycobacterial activities. Critical analyses of the structure allied to the anti-mycobacterial activity have allowed us to draw important conclusions and ideas for research and development on these promising molecules to realise their full potential. Even though the review is focussed on peptides, we have briefly summarised the structures and potency of the various small molecule drugs that are available and under development, for TB treatment.

Efficient computational model for identification of antitubercular peptides by integrating amino acid patterns and properties

Tuberculosis (TB) is a leading killer caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Recently, anti-TB peptides have provided an alternative approach to combat antibiotic tolerance. We have developed an effective computational predictor, identification of antitubercular peptides (iAntiTB), by the integration of multiple feature vectors deriving from the amino acid sequences via random forest (RF) and support vector machine (SVM) classifiers. The iAntiTB combines the RF and SVM scores via linear regression to enhance the prediction accuracy. To make a robust and accurate predictor, we prepared the two datasets with different types of negative samples. The iAntiTB achieved area under the ROC curve values of 0.896 and 0.946 on the training datasets of the first and second datasets, respectively. The iAntiTB outperformed the other existing predictors.

Structure-Activity Relationships of Wollamide Cyclic Hexapeptides with Activity against Drug-Resistant and Intracellular Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Wollamides are cyclic hexapeptides, recently isolated from an Australian soil Streptomyces isolate, that exhibit promising in vitro antimycobacterial activity against Mycobacterium bovis Bacille Calmette Guérin without displaying cytotoxicity against a panel of mammalian cells. Here, we report the synthesis and antimycobacterial activity of 36 new synthetic wollamides, collated with all known synthetic and natural wollamides, to reveal structure characteristics responsible for in vitro growth-inhibitory activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (H37Rv, H37Ra, CDC1551, HN878, and HN353). The most potent antimycobacterial wollamides were those where residue VI d-Orn (wollamide B) was replaced by d-Arg (wollamide B1) or d-Lys (wollamide B2), with all activity being lost when residue VI was replaced by Gly, l-Arg, or l-Lys (wollamide B3). Substitution of other amino acid residues mainly reduced or ablated antimycobacterial activity. Significantly, whereas wollamide B2 was the most potent in restricting M. tuberculosis in vitro, wollamide B1 restricted M. tuberculosis intracellular burden in infected macrophages. Wollamide B1 synergized with pretomanid (PA-824) in inhibiting M. tuberculosis in vitro growth but did not antagonize prominent first- and second-line tuberculosis antibiotics. Furthermore, wollamide B1 exerted bactericidal activity against nonreplicating M. tuberculosis and impaired growth of multidrug- and extensively drug-resistant clinical isolates. In vivo pharmacokinetic profiles for wollamide B1 in rats and mice encourage further optimization of the wollamide pharmacophore for in vivo bioavailability. Collectively, these observations highlight the potential of the wollamide antimycobacterial pharmacophore.

AntiTbPdb: a knowledgebase of anti-tubercular peptides

Tuberculosis is a global menace, caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, responsible for millions of premature deaths every year. In the era of drug-resistant tuberculosis, peptide-based therapeutics may provide alternate to small molecule based drugs. In order to create knowledgebase, AntiTbPdb (http://webs.iiitd.edu.in/raghava/antitbpdb/), experimentally validated anti-tubercular and anti-mycobacterial peptides were compiled from literature. We curate 10 652 research articles and 35 patents to extract anti-tubercular peptides and annotate these peptides manually. This knowledgebase has 1010 entries, each entry provides extensive information about an anti-tubercular peptide such as sequence, chemical modification, chirality, nature and source of origin. The tertiary structure of these anti-tubercular peptides containing natural as well as chemically modified residues was predicted using PEPstrMOD and I-TASSER. In addition to structural information, database maintains other properties of peptides like physiochemical properties. Numerous web-based tools have been integrated for data retrieval, browsing, sequence similarity search and peptide mapping. In order to assist wide range of user, we developed a responsive website suitable for smartphone, tablet and desktop.

Database URL: http://webs.iiitd.edu.in/raghava/antitbpdb/

Total Synthesis and Conformational Study of Callyaerin A: Anti-Tubercular Cyclic Peptide Bearing a Rare Rigidifying (Z)-2,3- Diaminoacrylamide Moiety

The first synthesis of the anti-TB cyclic peptide callyaerin A (1), containing a rare (Z)-2,3-diaminoacrylamide bridging motif, is reported. Fmoc-formylglycine-diethylacetal was used as a masked equivalent of formylglycine in the synthesis of the linear precursor to 1. Intramolecular cyclization between the formylglycine residue and the N-terminal amine in the linear peptide precursor afforded the macrocyclic natural product 1. Synthetic 1 possessed potent anti-TB activity (MIC₁₀₀ =32 μm) while its all-amide congener was inactive. Variable-temperature NMR studies of both the natural product and its all-amide analogue revealed the extraordinary rigidity imposed by this diaminoacrylamide unit on peptide conformation. The work reported herein pinpoints the intrinsic role that the (Z)-2,3-diaminoacrylamide moiety confers on peptide bioactivity.

Challenges in the design of insulin and relaxin/insulin-like peptide mimetics

Peptidomimetics are designed to overcome the poor pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics associated with the native peptide or protein on which they are based. The design of peptidomimetics starts from developing structure-activity relationships of the native ligand-target pair that identify the key residues that are responsible for the biological effect of the native peptide or protein. Then minimization of the structure and introduction of constraints are applied to create the core active site that can interact with the target with high affinity and selectivity. Developing peptidomimetics is not trivial and often challenging, particularly when peptides' interaction mechanism with their target is complex. This review will discuss the challenges of developing peptidomimetics of therapeutically important insulin superfamily peptides, particularly those which have two chains (A and B) and three disulfide bonds and whose receptors are known, namely insulin, H2 relaxin, H3 relaxin, INSL3 and INSL5.

Peptides conjugated to silver nanoparticles in biomedicine – a “value-added” phenomenon

This review presents a glimpse of the various aspects of nanoparticles, in particular silver nanoparticles and their conjugation to peptides, thus opening an avenue for new discoveries in nanomaterials.