Antibacterial activity identification of pCM19 and pCM12 derived from hGlyrichin.

Background: hGlyrichin is a novel human antimicrobial peptide rich in glycine. The previous study of known human antimicrobial peptides indicated that in an eligible range, the greater corresponding antibacterial activity was consisted with the shorter peptide sequence.

Findings: Two peptides named pCM19 and pCM12 were synthesized and the antibacterial activity assay results showed that these peptides exhibited strong antibacterial activity that was inversely proportional to the length of the peptide. Despite the effective inhibition of bacterial growth, the synthetic peptides showed no hemolytic effect on human red blood cells.

Conclusions: Taken together, these two peptides derived from hGlyrichin both have strong antibacterial activity and are not toxic to human somatic cells.