Antimicrobial Peptides from Photosynthetic Marine Organisms with Potential Application in Aquaculture

Abstract

Aquaculture production is at a record level and is estimated to increase in the coming years. However, this production can be negatively affected by infectious diseases produced by viruses, bacteria, and parasites, causing fish mortality and economic losses. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are small peptides that may be promising candidates to replace antibiotics because they are the first line of defense in animals against a wide variety of pathogens and have no negative effects; they also show additional activities such as antioxidant or immunoregulatory functions, which makes them powerful alternatives for use in aquaculture. Moreover, AMPs are highly available in natural sources and have already been used in the livestock farming and food industries. Photosynthetic marine organisms can survive under all kinds of environmental conditions and under extremely competitive environments thanks to their flexible metabolism. For this reason, these organisms represent a powerful source of bioactive molecules as nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals, including AMPs. Therefore, in this study we reviewed the present knowledge about AMPs from photosynthetic marine organism sources and analyzed whether they could be suitable for use in aquaculture.

Synthetic Antimicrobial Peptides Fail to Induce Leucocyte Innate Immune Functions but Elicit Opposing Transcriptomic Profiles in European Sea Bass and Gilthead Seabream

“…Therefore, this paper has focused on the in vitro immunomodulatory potential of three synthetic AMPs since they seem to be good immunomodulators for fish [11,27,34,35] and increase the resistance against important marine pathogens both in vitro and in vivo [12,26,28,31,[36][37][38]. The potential of the use of endogenous AMPs from a fish species to other fish species, or even humans, has been explored with excellent prospects [39][40][41][42][43]. In this sense, this manuscript also explores whether the employment of European sea bass-derived synthetic peptides resulted in the immunostimulation of another fish species, such as the gilthead seabream, apart from itself.…”

Recent developments and challenges in algal protein and peptide extraction strategies, functional and technological properties, bioaccessibility, and commercial applications

“…These proteins are increasingly utilized in the production of antibiotics and are anticipated to demonstrate heightened efficacy against bacterial infections in wildlife and animals (Guzmán et al, 2019). Peptides with antibacterial activity were identified in T. suecica, and Limnospira maxima showed antimicrobial activity against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Bacillus cereus (García-Beltrán et al, 2023;Guzmán et al, 2019). Antiviral, antifungal, or antiparasitic activ-ities of algal peptides were also reported, especially in cyanobacterial proteins.…”