Fluorine--a new element in the design of membrane-active peptides.

Antimicrobial peptides (also known as genetically encoded peptide antibiotics) are a diverse class of short cationic amphipathic polypeptides that exhibit a broad-spectrum of antimicrobial activities by selectively disrupting the bacterial cell membrane. In this review article, we present the use of fluorinated amino acids in the design of antimicrobial peptides and other membrane-active peptides.