Antimicrobial Peptides: A Promising Future Alternative to Antibiotics in Aquaculture

Abstract

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are a group of highly conserved oligopeptides with five to over 100 amino acids. They are pivotal humoral components of innate immunity and have been extensively studied in invertebrates and vertebrates including fish and exhibit broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity in vitro and in vivo. They are cationic molecules that can selectively attack negatively-charged bacterial cell membranes and brings about destruction of the organism by pore formation or destabilization of membrane equilibrium or by penetration into the cell and thereby the impairment of cellular machinery. Apart from having an antimicrobial role against many microorganisms, the salient features of AMPs are their broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity towards multi-drug resistant microbial isolates and very minimal chance to allow development resistance due to rapid lysis of cell membranes.