197 - Apoptosis like death-induced by Bac8c associates with reactive oxygen species level

Abstract

Antimicrobial peptides are one of the promising alternatives to existing antibiotics and are widely used to control bacterial infection. This study focuses on assessing the potential of bac8c- induced apoptosis like death against Escherichia coli. Their metabolic activity was attenuated by bac8c and the accumulation of reactive oxygen species was revealed. Among the reactive oxygen species, the formation of hydroxyl radicals, which has highly reactive, and is a typical bacterial apoptotic property. In addition, bac8c treated cells exhibited increased levels of hydroxyl radicals. Furthermore, other properties of bacterial apoptosis like death such as DNA fragmentation, caspase-like protein activation and membrane depolarization have emerged. Its apoptotic characteristics were reduced by eliminating reactive oxygen species. Therefore, bac8c is a derivative of the periodic antimicrobial peptide bactenecin, which induces bacterial apoptosis in response to reactive oxygen species. The novel mechanism of bac8c is an effective antimicrobial agent that can be clinically applied to prevent and treat bacterial infections and is much less likely to induce microbial resistance than antimicrobial agents.