The world is currently living through a multidrug resistance problem, where antibiotics that traditionally work are not effective anymore. A European team of scientists at the University of Hamburg (Germany), University of Munich (Germany), University of Bordeaux (France), University of Trieste (Italy) and University of London (UK) have studied how some peptides in dolphins target bacterial ribosomes and hence, could provide clues about potential new antibiotics.
Proline-rich antimicrobial peptides (PrAMPs) are antibacterial components of the immune systems of animals such as honey bees, cows and, as this study proves, bottlenose dolphins. These peptides are a first response for the killing of bacteria. In humans, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) mainly kill bacteria by disrupting the bacterial cell membrane, but so far no evidence of PrAMPs has been found. PrAMPs have a different mechanism of action to AMPs: they pass through the membrane of the cell without perturbing it and bind to ribosomes to inhibit protein synthesis.
The European team have been studying the mechanism of action of bacteria killing peptides in animals: “We want to compare PrAMPs from different organisms to mechanistically understand how these peptides inhibit bacteria”, Daniel Wilson explains.
Illustration showing the mechanism of Tur1A. (entire image: here)
Credits: D. Wilson