Gram negative-bacteria have a much thinner peptidoglycan layer than gram-positive, but also contain an outer lipid membrane. Both can be harmful to us, but because of gram-negative bacteria’s trend of antibiotic resistance, they are considered more dangerous.
Great work! What sorts of modifications do you predict could have been done to the compound to make it more effective? You mention doing something of the sort in the conclusion – do you have any predictions for what you could do and how it could affect your compound’s efficiency?
That’s a great question, one of my lab partners actually came up with the amino acid sequence. Our goal was for it to model these potentially healing cationic peptides mentioned in the presentation, but I’m unsure of what the next best sequence to test would be.
Could the shape of the compound be altered in such a way so that it would still have antimicrobial effects so that it could potentially kill salmonella?
Good job with your presentation! Since you picked peptides from the komodo dragon which are known to be antibacterial, who do you think the experiment did not work?
Their antimicrobial properties differ among all of these peptides. Little differences in composition affect what they work against. Although our compound did not display the properties we had hoped against salmonella, cationic peptides (CAMPs) work against a variety of things such as fungi, viruses etc. Therefore, maybe the composition of our compound might work against some other bacteria, and our results also don’t mean that there are no CAMPs that work against Salmonella, just not ours.
Due to CAMPs positive polarity, they are attracted to negatively charged surfaces. They work to kill bacteria by attaching onto their negative membrane, making it easier to penetrate to the center of the infected cell. Maybe the attraction between our compound and the salmonella didn’t have a desirable charge, so they never interacted.
It’s very cool that your group’s inspiration came from Komodo dragons! Do you know the specific reason why they have a much higher quantity of cationic peptides than humans, is it a defense mechanism that is related to why they don’t get cancer?
I don’t think it’s a self defense mechanism, it’s just when their born, the plasma in their blood already contains this high concentration of antimicrobial proteins.
I don’t think it’s a self defense mechanism. When these Komodo Dragons are born, the plasma within their blood already contains these antimicrobial peptides at higher concentrations.
What is the difference between gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria?
Gram negative-bacteria have a much thinner peptidoglycan layer than gram-positive, but also contain an outer lipid membrane. Both can be harmful to us, but because of gram-negative bacteria’s trend of antibiotic resistance, they are considered more dangerous.
Great work! What sorts of modifications do you predict could have been done to the compound to make it more effective? You mention doing something of the sort in the conclusion – do you have any predictions for what you could do and how it could affect your compound’s efficiency?
That’s a great question, one of my lab partners actually came up with the amino acid sequence. Our goal was for it to model these potentially healing cationic peptides mentioned in the presentation, but I’m unsure of what the next best sequence to test would be.
Could the shape of the compound be altered in such a way so that it would still have antimicrobial effects so that it could potentially kill salmonella?
Yes, totally. It’s just really unfortunate that the compound we created had none of these effects against the salmonella.
Good job with your presentation! Since you picked peptides from the komodo dragon which are known to be antibacterial, who do you think the experiment did not work?
Their antimicrobial properties differ among all of these peptides. Little differences in composition affect what they work against. Although our compound did not display the properties we had hoped against salmonella, cationic peptides (CAMPs) work against a variety of things such as fungi, viruses etc. Therefore, maybe the composition of our compound might work against some other bacteria, and our results also don’t mean that there are no CAMPs that work against Salmonella, just not ours.
How do the CAMPs work to kill bacteria? Do we know anything about the specific pathway that might explain why the experiment didn’t work?
Due to CAMPs positive polarity, they are attracted to negatively charged surfaces. They work to kill bacteria by attaching onto their negative membrane, making it easier to penetrate to the center of the infected cell. Maybe the attraction between our compound and the salmonella didn’t have a desirable charge, so they never interacted.
It’s very cool that your group’s inspiration came from Komodo dragons! Do you know the specific reason why they have a much higher quantity of cationic peptides than humans, is it a defense mechanism that is related to why they don’t get cancer?
I don’t think it’s a self defense mechanism, it’s just when their born, the plasma in their blood already contains this high concentration of antimicrobial proteins.
I don’t think it’s a self defense mechanism. When these Komodo Dragons are born, the plasma within their blood already contains these antimicrobial peptides at higher concentrations.