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A highly thermostable antimicrobial peptide from Aspergillus clavatus ES1: biochemical and molecular characterization

  • Original Paper
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Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology

Abstract

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are extremely attractive candidates as therapeutic agents due to their wide spectrum of antimicrobial activity and mechanism of action, which differs from that of small-molecule antibiotics. In this study, a 6.0-kDa antimicrobial peptide from Aspergillus clavatus ES1, designated as AcAMP, was isolated by a one-step heat treatment. AcAMP was sensitive to proteolytic enzymes, stable between pH 5.0 and 10.0, and heat resistant (15 min at 100°C). The acamp gene encoding AcAMP peptide was isolated by reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and cloned in pCR®II-TOPO vector. Sequence analysis of the complementary DNA (cDNA) acamp gene revealed an open reading frame of 282 bp encoding a peptide of 94 amino acid residues consisting of a 21-aa signal peptide, a 22-aa pro-peptide, and a 51-aa mature peptide. The deduced amino acid sequence showed high identity with other ascomycete antifungal peptides. AcAMP belongs to the group of small, cysteine-rich, basic proteins with antimicrobial activity. In addition to its antifungal activity, AcAMP is the first fungal peptide exhibiting antibacterial activity against several Gram-positive  and Gram-negative bacteria. Based on all these features, AcAMP can be considered as a promising new member of the restraint family of ascomycete antimicrobial peptides that might be used in biological control of plant diseases and also for potential applications in food preservation.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Mr. Philippe Roch from Montpellier University II for fruitful discussion and help with cloning. The authors would like to thank Mr. Ayadi Hajji from the Faculty of Letters and Humanities of Kairouan for his help with English. This work was funded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Tunisia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Génie Enzymatique et de Microbiologie, Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Sfax, 1173-3038, Sfax, Tunisia

    Mohamed Hajji, Kemel Jellouli, Noomen Hmidet, Rafik Balti, Alya Sellami-Kamoun & Moncef Nasri

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  1. Mohamed Hajji
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  2. Kemel Jellouli
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  3. Noomen Hmidet
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  4. Rafik Balti
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  5. Alya Sellami-Kamoun
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  6. Moncef Nasri
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Correspondence to Mohamed Hajji.

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Hajji, M., Jellouli, K., Hmidet, N. et al. A highly thermostable antimicrobial peptide from Aspergillus clavatus ES1: biochemical and molecular characterization. J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol 37, 805–813 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-010-0725-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-010-0725-6

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