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New Synthetic Peptides Conjugated to Gold Nanoclusters: Antibiotic Activity Against Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)

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Abstract

Gold nanoclusters protected with bovine serum albumin (AuNC) can be used in multiple biomedical applications through functionalization with two new and bioactive peptides. Both cationic peptides sequences of 17 amino acids in length and the cysteine residue at its C-terminus were designed and synthesized. Peptides were obtained by solid phase synthesis using the Fmoc strategy. Peptides may be coupled via disulfide bonds to AuNC with hydrodynamic size ~ 2 nm ± 0.3 determined by dynamic light scattering and it had a zeta potential value equal to − 42 mV. Peptides named NBC2253 and NBC2254 were attached to the AuNC using N-succinimidyl-3-(2-pyridyl-dithiol) propionate as crosslinker agent. AuNC@NBC2253 was more active against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MIC50 6.5 µM) and AuNC@NBC2254 exhibited higher antimicrobial activity than the free peptides on Escherichia coli O157:H7 (MIC50 3.5 µM). No hemolysis was detected for any of the peptides. It is evidenced that these antimicrobial peptides conjugated to AuNC serve as promising agents to combat some multi-resistant bacterial strains and that the specific binding of these antimicrobial peptides to gold nanoclusters improves the interaction of these nanostructured systems with the biological target.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by COLCIENCIAS through the Universidad Industrial de Santander under project 434-2011, and by the CINTROP research group performing the cytotoxic assays.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratorio de Espectroscopía Atómica y Molecular (LEAM), Centro de Materiales y Nanociencias (CMN), Parque Tecnológico Guatiguará, Universidad Industrial de Santander, Piedecuesta, 681012, Colombia

    Y. A. Prada, Rafael Cabanzo & Enrique Mejía-Ospino

  2. Laboratorio de Síntesis de Péptidos, Núcleo de Biotecnología Curauma (NBC), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, 2373223, Valparaíso, Chile

    Fanny Guzmán

  3. Grupo de Investigación en Bioquímica y Microbiología (GIBIM), Escuela de Química, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Industrial de Santander, Bucaramanga, 680001, Colombia

    Claudia Ortíz & Rodrigo Torres

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  1. Y. A. Prada
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  2. Fanny Guzmán
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  3. Claudia Ortíz
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  4. Rafael Cabanzo
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  5. Rodrigo Torres
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  6. Enrique Mejía-Ospino
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Correspondence to Y. A. Prada.

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Prada, Y.A., Guzmán, F., Ortíz, C. et al. New Synthetic Peptides Conjugated to Gold Nanoclusters: Antibiotic Activity Against Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Protein J 38, 506–514 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10930-019-09840-9

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