USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center
Abstract
Antimicrobial Peptides (AMPs) are novel therapeutic agents that play important roles in the innate immune system with its ability to kill gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. Antibiotics are losing their efficacy, thus requiring a larger dose of medicine for treatment resulting in the increase of antibiotic resistance. AMPs are an attractive approach for exploration due to their broad-spectrum activity and ease of synthesis. Furthermore, fewer bacteria have developed resistance to AMPs. Several AMPs have demonstrated increased antimicrobial activity with metal ions, like Zn(II) and Cu(II) binding to the peptide. In this study, we performed the purification of Calcitermin through high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and will be analyzing the metal-binding thermodynamics through isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC)
