Transcriptional Expression of Bioactive Antimicrobial Peptides with Biomedical Potential in Diverse Organs of the Mexican Axolotl

A notable challenge in modern biomedicine is the development of innovative therapies that mitigate resistance to conventional antibiotics. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), represent a promising source of new antibiotics due to their broad-spectrum activity and low incidence of resistance development, even against new infectious diseases. In nature, anuran amphibians (such as frogs and toads) are the largest source of recorded AMPs. However, salamanders and newts (such as the Mexican axolotl) have received less attention despite the fact that some promising bioactive peptides have been detected in their skin secretions. The axolotl is a critically endangered caudate amphibian endemic from Xochimilco’s Lake in Mexico, which is considered a biological model par excellence for genomic studies related to salamanders. In the present study, the wide availability of genomic resources of the axolotl was used to investigate the presence of possible new AMPs with biomedical potential, whose findings could be also extensive to other salamander species unexplored. In the axolotl, seventeen different coding transcripts for presumptive antimicrobial peptides, such as Leap2, Cathelicidins, β-Defensin, Hepcidins, Transferrins, and Cystatin-C were identified, whose transcriptional expression is mainly concentrated in the liver and spleen. This could potentially foster the development of new pharmacological treatments in the future.