Antimicrobial Peptides: Recent Insights on Biotechnological Interventions and Future Perspectives

Abstract

With the unprecedented rise of drug-resistant pathogens, particularly antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and no new antibiotics in the pipeline over the last three decades, the issue of antimicrobial resistance has emerged as a critical public health threat. Antimicrobial Peptides (AMP) have garnered interest as a viable solution to this grave issue and are being explored for their potential antimicrobial applications. Given their low bioavailability in nature, tailoring new AMPs or strategizing approaches for increasing the yield of AMPs, therefore, becomes pertinent. The present review focuses on biotechnological interventions directed towards enhanced AMP synthesis and revisits existing genetic engineering and synthetic biology strategies for production of AMPs. This review further underscores the importance and potential applications of advanced gene editing technologies for the synthesis of novel AMPs in future.

Keywords: Antimicrobial peptides; CRISPR-Cas9; antimicrobial resistance; gene editing; genetic engineering; magnifection..

Figure 1

Integrating CRISPR-Cas9 based gene editing with existing genetic engineering approaches for production of novel antimicrobial peptides.