{"doi":"10.3389/fmicb.2023.1125426","title":"Editorial: Community series in antimicrobial peptides: Molecular design, structure function relationship and biosynthesis optimization","abstract":"The continuous rise in antimicrobial resistance during the last decades has significantly contributed to the R&D of alternatives such as antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). In the first volume of this topic, we proposed a combinatorial approach involving AMPs, antimicrobials and vaccines, which would be instrumental for the prevention and treatment of human and animal diseases within the One Health framework (Fig. 1) (Wang et al., 2018(Wang et al., , 2019Yang et al., 2019;Ma et al., 2021;Cardoso et al., 2019a;Wu et al., 2021;Zheng et al., 2021;Hao et al., 2022). Compared to conventional antimicrobials, AMPs possess certain advantages such as high penetration and internalization, in some cases decreased likelihood of resistance emergence among bacterial pathogens, and lower probability of accumulation in tissues (Wang et al., 2019;Wang et al., 2022;Aminov 2022). Selective inhibition of bacterial pathogens without causing significant cytotoxic effects, is not only an essential requirement but also a critical challenge for the R&D of AMPs. The charge, special amino acid (aa) residues, hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity ratio and secondary structure directly affect the antibacterial activity, stability and cytotoxicity of AMPs. Thus, the discovery of new AMPs by natural screening, database mining and machine learning, in addition to the rational structural design of these agents could greatly contribute to translating them from lab to clinic. These exciting new developments are highlighted in 21 papers published in the second issue of the community series of research topics devoted to AMPs.AMPs are short natural molecules, which are encountered in the majority of living organisms and serve as a first line of defense. They are mostly of animal origin, with 73.9% of known natural AMPs isolated from this source (Collection of Anti-Microbial Peptides database (CAMPR4), http://www.camp.bicnirrh.res.in/dbStat.php, accessed on 11 December 2022). AMPs in animals serve as host defense peptides to prevent pathogen invasion. Liu et al. established the coding sequences (CDS) and deduced the full-length amino acid sequences of novel hepcidin peptides from Antarctic Notothenioid Fish. The mature hepcidin peptides possess the typical defensin structure containing four disulphide bonds. This AMP was successfully expressed in Escherichia coli and displayed a broad-spectrum antibacterial activity. Microorganisms also produce AMPs to defend their ecological niches. Compared to animal AMPs, however, the biosynthetic pathways of microbial AMPs are divided into ribosomally produced and non-ribosomally produced peptides, yielding a great diversity of structural types of AMPs. Wu et al. isolated a cyclic non-ribosomal lipopeptide polymyxin A1 from Paenibacillus thiaminolyticus and determined the biosynthetic gene cluster for its synthesis, which included five open reading frames (ORFs). The lipopeptide structure confers stability and strong activity against Gram-negatove bacteria. This AMP, however, should be further tested for its efficacy and toxicity in vivo. Bacteriocins are ribosomally produced AMPs, which primary function is to inhibit competing strains present within the same ecological niche. Thus, they display a narrow activity range, essentially directed towards close relatives. This property could be advantageous, allowing precision therapy and infection control. Vogel and others isolated a bacteriocin Angicin from Streptococcus anginosus, which is not subjected to posttranslational modifications (Vogel et al., 2021). Angicin displays no cytotoxicity toward eukaryotic cells since it precisely targets the bacterial mannose phosphotransferase system (Man-PTS), and there is no identified target in eukaryotic cells (Vogel et al.). Previous studies on AMPs have been mainly focused on their antimicrobial effect against bacteria, but some recent works have also involved fungi. Fungi are frequently plant pathogens, and there has been a considerable interest in ","journal":"Frontiers in Microbiology","year":2023,"id":390335,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":11,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9584,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1161681,"name":"Rustam Aminov","orcid":"0000-0002-5811-8322","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":919896,"name":"Octávio Luiz Franco","orcid":"0000-0001-9546-0525","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106919,"name":"César de la Fuente‐Núñez","orcid":"0000-0002-2005-5629","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1161682,"name":"Jianhua Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-4048-6055","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1161680,"name":"Na Yang","orcid":"0000-0002-5286-7656","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":51,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:18:32.854511Z","pmid":"36726373","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}