Frog skin active peptides (FSAP) as a highy effective antimicrobial agents

Abstract

Dur ing last ten to fif teen years a con sid er able sci en tific at ten tion has been paid to bi o log i cally ac tive substances as known as frog skin ac tive pep tides (FSAP). These sub stances are nat u rally pro duced by many Amphibian or gan isms and could be found within skin se cre tion of most frog fam i lies, es pe cially Ranidae. Biomolecules of that class pos sess ex tremely valu able prop er ties: show high antimicrobial and antifungal activ ity -es pe cially ef fec tive against multiresistant bac te rial in fec tions; act as pro te ase in hib i tors and com ponents of an in nate im mune sys tem; dem on strate rel a tively weak hemolytic ac tiv ity. Such a com bi na tion makes frog skin ac tive pep tides a po ten tial can di dates for drug de vel op ment with pos si ble ap pli ca tion in ther apy, traumatology, sur gery, etc. In pres ent pa per an or i gin, clas si fi ca tion, func tion as well as meth ods for de ter mina tion of FSAP are sum ma rized. It is un der lined that Bul gar ian re gion is def i nitely suit able for ex ten sive FSAP in ves ti ga tions due to the nat u rally abun dance of ge nus Rana spe cies. Key words: frog skin active peptides (FSAP), antimicrobial peptides, multiresistant bacterial infections, drug development What are FSAP?Frog skin ac tive pep tides (FSAP) are nat u rally pro duced polypeptides of 20-30 AA length and 2000-3000 Da molec u lar weight in av er age; there are ex treme ex cep tions though. It was shown many times that FSAP are im por tant skin se cre tion com po nents of or gan isms be long ing to class Amphibia, sub class Lissamphibia (frogs, toads, sal a manders, newts, etc.). Due to the in creas ing in ter est now a days, the num ber of isolated and stud ied FSAP sub stances con stantly grows (now ex ceeds 200); there are even some cor re spon dent no mencla ture prob lems raised (6). The sys tem at i cal re search on FSAP has be gun in the early 1990s. It ap pears that frog skin ac tive pep tides could be cate go rized in groups (pep tide lines) and in pep tide fam i lies within these lines. On the ba sis of lim ited struc tural sim i larity, at least 11 well-es tab lished pep tide lines have been iden ti fied so far (6). In Ta ble 1 a brief in for ma tion con cerning known FSAP lines is given; more de tailed data on major rep re sen ta tives could be found in Ta ble 2.Why world sci en tists are in ter ested in FSAP?