Abstract
At present, the international antibiotic resistance situation is severe, and antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have become a new research topic for solving the issue of antibiotic resistance. In addition, AMPs have also shown remarkable anti-cancer effects. It is, therefore, important to look for promising alternatives to traditional antibiotics from AMPs. A novel AMP was identified from the skin secretion of Rana chensinensis by molecular cloning. The peptide encoding cDNA was successfully sequenced via bioinformatics tools, which revealed that the peptide is a member of temporin family, with the mature peptide sequence as FVDLKKIANIINSIF-NH2, namely QUB1735. The solid phase peptide synthesis was conducted to obtain sufficient peptide replicates for the further biological investigation. RP-HPLC and MALDI-TOF were employed for purification of crude synthetic peptide and the purified peptide were then lyophilized. QUB1735 exhibited potent antimicrobial activity against the growth of Gram-positive bacteria, S. aureus, Gram-negative bacteria, E.coli and the yeast C. albicans with the MIC of 8, 256, 32 µM, respectively. In addition, it also exhibited inhibitory activity against U251MG and H157 cells at 10-4M. However, QUB1735 showed obvious haemolytic activity from 16 μM, therefore reducing the haemolytic activity of QUB1735 will be the future research direction.Thesis embargoed until 31st October 2024
| Date of Award | Dec 2019 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Tianbao Chen (Supervisor), Mei Zhou (Supervisor) & Lei Wang (Supervisor) |