NANO.IL.

Random Peptide Mixtures Entrapped in Metallic Copper: New Composites Highly Efficient Against Resistant Bacteria

Tal Stern-Bauer Institute of Biochemistry Food Science and Nutrition, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

The antibiotic resistance worldwide crisis poses the challenge to develop new efficient antimicrobial materials. As combining of two components has a potential of decreasing resistance development, we apply doping materials methodology that enables the entrapment of small organic molecules or peptides within metals. Copper, an ancient and useful bacteriocide, serve as the metal matrix in which antimicrobial random peptides (RPMs) entrapped. RPMs mimic natural antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) as share characteristic of short chain lengths (10 or 20-mer) and presence of hydrophobic (Leucine) and cationic (Lysine) amino acids but the sequences are random. Characterization of chemical and biological aspects of the resulting material (LK@Cu) revealed that the RPMs entrapped within agglomerated copper nanocrystals that exhibits higher antimicrobial activity against methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus than copper or RPMs separately. These finding raise the potential of new combined compounds to serve as novel antimicrobial agents to fight resistant pathogenic bacteria in agriculture and health fields.









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