Two novel antimicrobial peptides from skin secretions of the frog, Rana nigrovittata.

Two novel antimicrobial peptides with similarity to brevinin-2 family are purified and characterized from the skin secretions of the frog, Rana nigrovittata. Their amino acid sequences were determined as GAFGNFLKGVAKKAGLKILSIAQCKLSGTC (brevinin-2-RN1) and GAFGNFLKGVAKKAGLKILSIAQCKLFGTC (brevinin-2-RN2), respectively, by Edman degradation. Different from brevinin-2, which is composed of 33 amino acid residues (aa), both brevinin-2-RN1 and -RN2 contain 30 aa. Five cDNA sequences (Genbank accession numbers, EU136465-9) encoding precursors of brevinin-2-RN1 and -RN2 were screened from the skin cDNA library of R. nigrovittata. These precursors are composed of 72 aa including a predicted signal peptide, an acidic spacer peptide, and a mature brevinin-2-RN. Both brevinin-2-RN1 and -RN2 showed strong antimicrobial activities against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria and fungi. The current work identified and characterized two novel antimicrobial peptides with unique primary structure.