Microbial Biofactories for the Synthesis of Antimicrobial Peptides

Abstract

Making antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), which show great potential as novel approaches to treat illnesses resistant to medications, depends on microbial biofactories, which have become very helpful.  Effective against a spectrum of microorganisms, AMPs are a class of naturally occurring peptides. This makes them feasible choices for combat of newly emerging viral infections.  Making AMPs via conventional chemical synthesis techniques might therefore present challenges like cost, lack of numerous AMPs, and limited availability of them.  This has spurred research on bacterial systems as biofactories producing AMP.Yeasts, bacteria, and fungi among other microorganisms are being altered to overexpress AMP genes and produce peptides into the growth media. This increases production's cost-effective scalability.  Thanks to synthetic biology technologies, metabolic engineering, and fermentation optimisation, the manufacturing of AMP in microbial systems has become much more efficient and prolific.  To demonstrate that they can support the high-level translation of bioactive peptides, Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae have been employed effectively as host organisms to create various AMPs. The ability of microbial biofactories to generate a wide range of diverse AMPs with varying antibacterial characteristics is among their greatest advantages.  By use of natural biochemical pathways or by generating novel peptide sequences via genetic engineering, microorganisms may produce peptides that target certain bacteria or halt resistance mechanisms in their tracks.  Furthermore, the synthesis of AMPs by microorganisms makes it possible to add post-translational modifications such as glycosylation and cyclisation, which can increase their stability, bioactivity, and therapeutic value. Notwithstanding these developments, numerous issues still need to be resolved before we can completely maximise the AMP generation by microorganisms. These include host-cell toxicity, peptide solubility, and processing techniques.  Future research aims primarily to raise the efficiency and volume of AMP manufacturing. Creating more stable microbial strains, improving fermentation techniques, and researching novel microbial species that especially produce AMP can help to accomplish this.  Furthermore crucial for producing novel AMPs more effective in killing bacteria is the use of computer algorithms and systems biology approaches.