A new computer program can help researchers identify new potential antimicrobial peptides with high accuracy and ease, according to a recent study published in the international journal Scientific Reports.
Antimicrobial peptides are small proteins that occur naturally in various animals and plants and confer immunity to bacteria, fungi, and viruses. These have recently gained popularity in clinical practice because they are safe and efficacious. Microbes acquire resistance to available antibiotics in due course of time, which discerns the need to hunt for new antibiotics. Antimicrobial peptides are better alternatives to chemical antibiotics, but searching for them through wet lab experiments is labor intensive and costly.
Researchers at the Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute, New Delhi and Janta Vedic College, Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh have developed a computer program that can identify potential antimicrobial peptides with an accuracy of almost 96%. The open access prediction server named iAMPpred is HTML and PHP based and is available freely at http://cabgrid.res.in:8080/amppred.
The server can predict if a protein sequence is antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal after the user enters the protein sequence in a FASTA file format. Within a span of few seconds, the user can know if the protein sequence that he has entered is a potential antibiotic. The prediction server has been tested with more than 1000 peptide sequences from plants, animals, and amphibians. “The accuracies of iAMPpred was found to be much higher than that of other available prediction servers”, claim scientists.
Researchers and clinicians are concerned about the rising antibiotic resistance. New and better software tools can help researchers across the globe to identify new antibiotics in lesser cost, effort, and time.
Published- India Science Wire
Reference: Scientific Reports 7: 42362.
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