Rapid identification of compounds with enhanced antimicrobial activity by using conformationally defined combinatorial libraries Article

Blondelle, SE, Takahashi, E, Houghten, RA et al. (1996). Rapid identification of compounds with enhanced antimicrobial activity by using conformationally defined combinatorial libraries . BIOCHEMICAL JOURNAL, 313(1), 141-147. 10.1042/bj3130141

cited authors

  • Blondelle, SE; Takahashi, E; Houghten, RA; Pérez-Payá, E

abstract

  • We have combined the strength of our synthetic combinatorial library approach for the rapid identification of highly active compounds with prior knowledge of the relationship between the antimicrobial activities of individual peptides with specific induced conformations in order to identify new peptides with enhanced activity relative to a starting known antimicrobial sequence. In the current study, conformationally defined combinatorial libraries were generated based on an 18-mer antimicrobial peptide known to be induced into an α-helical conformation in a lipidic environment. Not only were novel sequences readily identified with 10-fold increases in activity, but detailed information about the structure-activity relationships of the peptides studied was also obtained during the deconvolution process. By using circular dichroism spectroscopy it was found that the individual 18-mer peptides could be induced into α-helical conformations on interaction with the cell lipid layer and/or sialic acids, which could result in bacterial cell lysis due to perturbation of the lipid packing of the cell wall.

publication date

  • January 1, 1996

published in

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

start page

  • 141

end page

  • 147

volume

  • 313

issue

  • 1