Susceptibility of Oral Bacteria to an Antimicrobial Decapeptide.

摘要

Naturally occurring antimicrobial peptides have emerged as alternative classes of antimicrobials. In general, these antimicrobial peptides exhibits electivity for prokaryotes and minimize the problems of engendering microbial resistance. As an alternative method to search for more effective broad- spectrum peptide antimicrobials, investigators have developed peptide libraries by using synthetic combinatorial technology. A novel decapeptide, KKVVFKVKFK (KSL), has been identified that shows a broad range of antibacterial activity. The purpose of this study was to test the efficacy of this antimicrobial peptide in killing selected strains of oral pathogens and resident saliva bacteria collected from human subjects. Cytotoxic activity of KSL against mammalian cells and the structural features of this decapeptide were also investigated, the latter by using two-dimensional NMR in aqueous and DMSO solutions. MICs of KSL for the majority of oral bacteria tested in vitro ranged from3 to 100 micro(g) ml(exp -1).