PMID:23537644

Citation	Wada, A, Wong, PF, Hojo, H, Hasegawa, M, Ichinose, A, Llanes, R, Kubo, Y, Senba, M and Ichinose, Y (2013) Alarin but not its alternative-splicing form, GALP (Galanin-like peptide) has antimicrobial activity. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 434:223-7
Abstract	Alarin is an alternative-splicing form of GALP (galanin-like peptide). It shares only 5 conserved amino acids at the N-terminal region with GALP which is involved in a diverse range of normal brain functions. This study seeks to investigate whether alarin has additional functions due to its differences from GALP. Here, we have shown using a radial diffusion assay that alarin but not GALP inhibited the growth of Escherichia coli (strain ML-35). The conserved N-terminal region, however, remained essential for the antimicrobial activity of alarin as truncated peptides showed reduced killing effect. Moreover, alarin inhibited the growth of E. coli in a similar potency as human cathelicidin LL-37, a well-studied antimicrobial peptide. Electron microscopy further showed that alarin induced bacterial membrane blebbing but unlike LL-37, it did not cause hemolysis of erythrocytes. In addition, alarin is only active against the gram-negative bacteria, E. coli but not the gram-positive bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus. Thus, these data suggest that alarin has potentials as an antimicrobial and should be considered for the development in human therapeutics.
Links	PubMed Online version:10.1016/j.bbrc.2013.03.045
Keywords	Amino Acid Sequence; Animals; Anti-Bacterial Agents/pharmacology; Antimicrobial Cationic Peptides; Cathelicidins/pharmacology; Cell Membrane/drug effects; Erythrocytes/drug effects; Escherichia coli/drug effects; Escherichia coli/growth & development; Escherichia coli/ultrastructure; Galanin-Like Peptide/analogs & derivatives; Galanin-Like Peptide/pharmacology; Hemolysis; Horses/blood; Humans; Microbial Sensitivity Tests; Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; Molecular Sequence Data; Staphylococcus aureus/drug effects; Staphylococcus aureus/growth & development
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Annotations

Gene product	Qualifier	GO Term	Evidence Code	with/from	Aspect	Extension	Notes	Status
HUMAN:CAMP	involved_in	GO:0050829: defense response to Gram-negative bacterium	ECO:0000314: direct assay evidence used in manual assertion		P		Seeded From UniProt	complete
HUMAN:CAMP	involved_in	GO:0035821: modification of morphology or physiology of other organism	ECO:0000314: direct assay evidence used in manual assertion		P		Seeded From UniProt	complete
HUMAN:CAMP	involved_in	GO:0050830: defense response to Gram-positive bacterium	ECO:0000314: direct assay evidence used in manual assertion		P		Seeded From UniProt	complete
HUMAN:CAMP	involved_in	GO:0061844: antimicrobial humoral immune response mediated by antimicrobial peptide	ECO:0000314: direct assay evidence used in manual assertion		P		Seeded From UniProt	complete

References

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