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A New Broad-Spectrum Peptide Antibiotic Produced by Bacillus brevis Strain MH9 Isolated from Margalla Hills of Islamabad, Pakistan

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Abstract

The antimicrobial peptide from a bacterial strain is isolated from soil sample of Margalla Hills of Islamabad, Pakistan. The peptide is found to significantly inhibit the growth of both Gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 6538 and Micrococcus luteus ATCC 10240) and Gram-negative (Escherichia coli ATCC 25922 and Salmonella typhi ATCC 14028) bacteria as compared to gramicidin as standard. The bacterium is identified as Bacillus brevis strain MH9 based on phenotype and phylogenetic analysis. The antibacterial polypeptide was produced optimally at 35 °C after 48 h of growth, precipitated by 50 % ammonium sulphate, and further purified using HPLC. The sequential steps of purification decrease the peptide contents with prominent antibacterial activity. The peptide composed of 11 amino acid was further characterized by FT-IR and NMR. Results suggested that the peptide molecule is a novel antibacterial agent that is effective against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. This study may have important implications for new peptide antibiotic that could be a new addition to treat infections.

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Correspondence to Amjad Ali.

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There was no funding available for this research. We acknowledge the administrative support of Atta-ur-Rahman School of Applied Biosciences, National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad and Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan, Pakistan.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Muhammad, S.A., Ali, A., Naz, A. et al. A New Broad-Spectrum Peptide Antibiotic Produced by Bacillus brevis Strain MH9 Isolated from Margalla Hills of Islamabad, Pakistan. Int J Pept Res Ther 22, 271–279 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10989-015-9508-2

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