Molecular cloning, expression and in vitro analysis of soluble cationic synthetic antimicrobial peptide from salt-inducible Escherichia coli GJ1158

Abstract

Antimicrobial peptides are the upcoming therapeutic molecules as alternative drugs to the existing antibiotics owing to their potent action against pathogenic microorganisms. In this study, to obtain an antimicrobial peptide with a broad range of activity, the synthetic cationic antimicrobial peptide was designed by using in silico tools viz., antimicrobial peptide database, protparam, hierarchical neural network. Later, the peptide was translated back into a core nucleotide sequence and the gene for the peptide was constructed by overlapping PCR. The amplified gene was cloned into pRSET–A vector and transformed into salt inducible expression host E. coli GJ1158. The expression results show high yields of soluble recombinant fusion peptide (0.52 g/L) from salt-inducible E. coli. The recombinant peptide was purified by the IMAC purification system and cleaved by enterokinase. The digested product was further purified and 0.12 g/L of biologically active recombinant cationic antimicrobial peptide was obtained. In vitro analysis of the purified peptide demonstrated high antimicrobial activity against both Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria devoid of hemolytic activity. Therefore, this synthetic cationic antimicrobial peptide could serves as an promising agent over chemical antibiotics. In this study, a synthetic cationic antimicrobial peptide was designed, cloned and expressed from salt-inducible E. coli GJ1158 using cost effective media in the large scale production of antimicrobial peptide and its biological activity was analysed against different Gram positive and negative organisms.

Keywords

• synthetic antimicrobial peptide
• in silco techniques
• pRSET-A
• IMAC purification
• entirokinase
• antimicrobial activity