A vastarray of bioactive peptides from amphibian skin secretions is attracting increasing attention due to the growing problem of bacteria resistant to conventional antibiotics. In this report, a small molecular antibacterial peptide, named Xenopus laevis antibacterial peptide-P1 (XLAsp-P1), was isolated from the skin of Xenopus laevis using reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography. The primary structure of XLAsp-P1, which has been proved to be a novel peptide by BLAST search in AMP database, was DEDDD with a molecular weight of 607.7 Da analysed by Edman degradation and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF/TOF-MS). The highlight of XLAsp-P1 is the strong in vitro potency against a variety of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria with minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) starting at 10 μg/mL and potent inhibitory activity against breast cancer cell at tested concentrations from 5 to 50 μg/mL. In addition, only 6.2 % of red blood cells was haemolytic when incubated with 64 μg/mL (higher than MICs of all bacterial strain) of XLAsp-P1. The antimicrobial mechanism for this novel peptide was the destruction of the cell membrane investigated by transmission electron microscopy. All these showed that XLAsp-P1 is a novel short anionic antibacterial peptide with broad antibacterial activity and inhibitory activity against breast cancer cell.
Keywords: Antibacterial peptide; Breast cancer; Cell haemolysis; Short peptide.