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Activity of Specialized Biomolecules against Gram-Positive and Gram-Negative Bacteria

The increased resistance of bacteria against conventional pharmaceutical solutions, the antibiotics, has raised serious health concerns. This has stimulated interest in the development of bio-based therapeutics with limited resistance, namely, essential oils (EOs) or antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). T...

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Autores principales: Tavares, Tânia D., Antunes, Joana C., Padrão, Jorge, Ribeiro, Ana I., Zille, Andrea, Amorim, M. Teresa P., Ferreira, Fernando, Felgueiras, Helena P.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7344598/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32526972
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics9060314
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author Tavares, Tânia D.
Antunes, Joana C.
Padrão, Jorge
Ribeiro, Ana I.
Zille, Andrea
Amorim, M. Teresa P.
Ferreira, Fernando
Felgueiras, Helena P.
author_facet Tavares, Tânia D.
Antunes, Joana C.
Padrão, Jorge
Ribeiro, Ana I.
Zille, Andrea
Amorim, M. Teresa P.
Ferreira, Fernando
Felgueiras, Helena P.
author_sort Tavares, Tânia D.
collection PubMed
description The increased resistance of bacteria against conventional pharmaceutical solutions, the antibiotics, has raised serious health concerns. This has stimulated interest in the development of bio-based therapeutics with limited resistance, namely, essential oils (EOs) or antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). This study envisaged the evaluation of the antimicrobial efficacy of selected biomolecules, namely LL37, pexiganan, tea tree oil (TTO), cinnamon leaf oil (CLO) and niaouli oil (NO), against four bacteria commonly associated to nosocomial infections: Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The antibiotic vancomycin and silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were used as control compounds for comparison purposes. The biomolecules were initially screened for their antibacterial efficacy using the agar-diffusion test, followed by the determination of minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs), kill-time kinetics and the evaluation of the cell morphology upon 24 h exposure. All agents were effective against the selected bacteria. Interestingly, the AgNPs required a higher concentration (4000–1250 μg/mL) to induce the same effects as the AMPs (500–7.8 μg/mL) or EOs (365.2–19.7 μg/mL). Pexiganan and CLO were the most effective biomolecules, requiring lower concentrations to kill both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria (62.5–7.8 μg/mL and 39.3–19.7 μg/mL, respectively), within a short period of time (averaging 2 h 15 min for all bacteria). Most biomolecules apparently disrupted the bacteria membrane stability due to the observed cell morphology deformation and by effecting on the intracellular space. AMPs were observed to induce morphological deformations and cellular content release, while EOs were seen to split and completely envelope bacteria. Data unraveled more of the potential of these new biomolecules as replacements for the conventional antibiotics and allowed us to take a step forward in the understanding of their mechanisms of action against infection-related bacteria.
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spelling pubmed-73445982020-07-09 Activity of Specialized Biomolecules against Gram-Positive and Gram-Negative Bacteria Tavares, Tânia D. Antunes, Joana C. Padrão, Jorge Ribeiro, Ana I. Zille, Andrea Amorim, M. Teresa P. Ferreira, Fernando Felgueiras, Helena P. Antibiotics (Basel) Article The increased resistance of bacteria against conventional pharmaceutical solutions, the antibiotics, has raised serious health concerns. This has stimulated interest in the development of bio-based therapeutics with limited resistance, namely, essential oils (EOs) or antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). This study envisaged the evaluation of the antimicrobial efficacy of selected biomolecules, namely LL37, pexiganan, tea tree oil (TTO), cinnamon leaf oil (CLO) and niaouli oil (NO), against four bacteria commonly associated to nosocomial infections: Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The antibiotic vancomycin and silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were used as control compounds for comparison purposes. The biomolecules were initially screened for their antibacterial efficacy using the agar-diffusion test, followed by the determination of minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs), kill-time kinetics and the evaluation of the cell morphology upon 24 h exposure. All agents were effective against the selected bacteria. Interestingly, the AgNPs required a higher concentration (4000–1250 μg/mL) to induce the same effects as the AMPs (500–7.8 μg/mL) or EOs (365.2–19.7 μg/mL). Pexiganan and CLO were the most effective biomolecules, requiring lower concentrations to kill both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria (62.5–7.8 μg/mL and 39.3–19.7 μg/mL, respectively), within a short period of time (averaging 2 h 15 min for all bacteria). Most biomolecules apparently disrupted the bacteria membrane stability due to the observed cell morphology deformation and by effecting on the intracellular space. AMPs were observed to induce morphological deformations and cellular content release, while EOs were seen to split and completely envelope bacteria. Data unraveled more of the potential of these new biomolecules as replacements for the conventional antibiotics and allowed us to take a step forward in the understanding of their mechanisms of action against infection-related bacteria. MDPI 2020-06-09 /pmc/articles/PMC7344598/ /pubmed/32526972 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics9060314 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Tavares, Tânia D.
Antunes, Joana C.
Padrão, Jorge
Ribeiro, Ana I.
Zille, Andrea
Amorim, M. Teresa P.
Ferreira, Fernando
Felgueiras, Helena P.
Activity of Specialized Biomolecules against Gram-Positive and Gram-Negative Bacteria
title Activity of Specialized Biomolecules against Gram-Positive and Gram-Negative Bacteria
title_full Activity of Specialized Biomolecules against Gram-Positive and Gram-Negative Bacteria
title_fullStr Activity of Specialized Biomolecules against Gram-Positive and Gram-Negative Bacteria
title_full_unstemmed Activity of Specialized Biomolecules against Gram-Positive and Gram-Negative Bacteria
title_short Activity of Specialized Biomolecules against Gram-Positive and Gram-Negative Bacteria
title_sort activity of specialized biomolecules against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7344598/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32526972
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics9060314
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