An ultrasensitive microfluidic approach reveals correlations between the physico-chemical and biological activity of experimental peptide antibiotics.

ABSTRACT: Antimicrobial resistance challenges the ability of modern medicine to contain infections. Given the dire need for new antimicrobials, polypeptide antibiotics hold particular promise. These agents hit multiple targets in bacteria starting with their most exposed regions-their membranes. However, suitable approaches to quantify the efficacy of polypeptide antibiotics at the membrane and cellular level have been lacking. Here, we employ two complementary microfluidic platforms to probe the structure-activity relationships of two experimental series of polypeptide antibiotics. We reveal strong correlations between each peptide's physicochemical activity at the membrane level and biological activity at the cellular level. We achieve this knowledge by assaying the membranolytic activities of the

SUBMITTER: Cama J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8901753 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature