Coral-Derived Antimicrobial Peptides Identified In Silico from Acropora digitifera Transcriptomes: Potential...

Area of Science:

• Marine biotechnology
• Antimicrobial drug discovery
• Bioinformatics

Background:

• Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses a significant global health threat, necessitating novel therapeutic strategies.
• Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are a promising class of compounds with potential to overcome AMR due to their membrane-disrupting or intracellular inhibitory mechanisms.
• The coral genus Acropora is a rich source for discovering bioactive compounds, including AMPs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To computationally identify and characterize potential antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) from the coral Acropora digitifera.
• To evaluate the binding efficacy of identified AMPs against key bacterial targets in Gram-negative pathogens.
• To leverage in silico tools for accelerating the discovery of novel AMPs for therapeutic applications.

Main Methods:

• Transcriptomic data analysis from Acropora digitifera across various life stages and cultured cells.
• Application of bioinformatics tools including multiple sequence alignments, Hidden Markov models, and machine learning algorithms.
• In silico molecular modeling, physicochemical property assessment, and molecular docking to predict binding interactions with bacterial targets like TolC, OprM, and DNA gyrase B.

Main Results:

• Fifteen potential antimicrobial peptide sequences were identified from A. digitifera transcriptomes.
• Specific AMPs demonstrated favorable binding affinities to bacterial protein targets: AMP-Ad2 to E. coli TolC, AMP-Ad3 to P. aeruginosa OprM, and AMP-Ad15 to K. pneumoniae TolC.
• AMP-Ad15 exhibited the strongest overall binding interaction with DNA gyrase B from K. pneumoniae.

Conclusions:

• In silico prediction tools are effective for identifying potential AMP candidates from coral transcriptomes.
• Identified AMPs from A. digitifera show therapeutic potential against resistant Gram-negative bacteria.
• These findings provide a foundation for synthesizing and experimentally validating these AMPs for antimicrobial drug development.