Antimicrobial Peptides and Their Applications

The health benefits of antimicrobial peptides have recently caught the interest of academics, pharmaceutical companies, and medical professionals. They are low-molecular-weight small protein molecules and exhibit a variety of antibacterial and immune-modulating effects on pathogenic bacteria whether Gram-negative or positive, fungi, and viruses. Most antimicrobial peptides do not allow for microorganism resistance, making these peptides an effective product that can significantly influence the new antimicrobial era. Based on their physicochemical characteristics that include net charge, solubility, and secondary structure content, these antimicrobial peptides have been divided into different categories. Antimicrobial peptides have evolved over the past few years into powerful alternative agents, addressing the demand for new anti-infective drugs to solve the issue of increasing resistance towards the antibiotics. The demand for antimicrobial peptides is also boosted as a result of a quick need for potent antimicrobial agents to fight the existing epidemics and pandemics as well as future microbial disease outbreaks. These antimicrobial peptides inhibit a number of bacteria by primarily targeting particular intracellular components or cell membranes through various distinctive methods. These peptides can be produced utilizing recombinant methods in a number of hosts as well as from natural sources. The synthetic analogs of antimicrobial peptides, which have been designed through certain modifications, are anticipated to overcome the activity, toxicity, and stability constraints associated with natural antimicrobial peptides. The pharmaceutical, food, agricultural, environmental, and animal husbandry industries might employ antimicrobial peptides as antimicrobial agents. In this book chapter, in addition to discussing opportunities for their possible applications, we have summarized about the structure, classification, and mode of action of antimicrobial peptides.