Insect Antimicrobial Peptide Complexes Prevent Resistance Development in Bacteria

Abstract

In recent decades much attention has been paid to antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) as natural antibiotics, which are presumably protected from resistance development in bacteria. However, experimental evolution studies have revealed prompt resistance increase in bacteria to any individual AMP tested. Here we demonstrate that naturally occurring compounds containing insect AMP complexes have clear advantage over individual peptide and small molecule antibiotics in respect of drug resistance development. As a model we have used the compounds isolated from bacteria challenged maggots of Calliphoridae flies. The compound isolated from blow fly Calliphora vicina was found to contain three distinct families of cell membrane disrupting/permeabilizing peptides (defensins, cecropins and diptericins), one family of proline rich peptides and several unknown antimicrobial substances. Resistance changes under long term selective pressure of the compound and reference antibiotics cefotaxime, meropenem and polymyxin B were tested using Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumonia and Acinetobacter baumannii clinical strains. All the strains readily developed resistance to the reference antibiotics, while no signs of resistance growth to the compound were registered. Similar results were obtained with the compounds isolated from 3 other fly species. The experiments revealed that natural compounds containing insect AMP complexes, in contrast to individual AMP and small molecule antibiotics, are well protected from resistance development in bacteria. Further progress in the research of natural AMP complexes may provide novel solutions to the drug resistance problem.

Insect proteins as a potential source of antimicrobial peptides in livestock production. A review

“…The respective microorganisms readily developed bacterial resistance to the reference antibiotics, whereas no signs of resistance to the extracted AMP compound were observed. Similar results were obtained by Chernysh et al (2015) for AMP compounds isolated from the maggots of 3 other fly species, e.g., blue blowfly (Calliphora vomitoria), green bottleneck fly (Lucilia sericata) and house fly (M. domestica).…”

“…Results obtainened in vitro suggest that compounds containing insect AMP complexes have an advantage over individual peptide and small molecule antibiotics (Chernysh et al, 2015). In line with this, the application of insect meal providing a variety of different AMPs as a supplement to animal feed may give rise to new possibilities in animal production.…”

“…In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the usage of AMPs, and much of this attention has been devoted to research regarding their impact (Narayanan et al, 2014;Chernysh et al, 2015). Most AMPs are small, cationic proteins that exhibit activity against bacteria and/or fungi, as well as certain parasites and viruses (Lee et al, 1998(Lee et al, , 1999Aerts et al, 2008;Ratcliffe et al, 2011;Sun et al, 2014;Yi et al, 2014).…”

“…It has been shown that naturally occurring compounds containing insect AMP complexes have an edge over individual peptide and small molecule antibiotics with respect to the development of bacterial drug resistance (Chernysh et al, 2015). The authors extracted AMP compounds from bacterial challenged maggots of Calliphoridae fly and housefly (M. domestica).…”

Karasinekteki (Musca domestica) Antimikrobiyal Peptidler Salmonella pullorum ile Enfekte Tavuklarda Bağırsak Lactobacillus acidophilus ve Mukozal Epitel Hücrelerini Etkiler

“…However, several studies have shown that AMPs have no real advantage compared with traditional antibiotics [16][17][18] . In recent years, AMPs have been used as a feed additive to prevent S. Pullorum infection.…”