Membrane-active peptides from marine organisms--antimicrobials, cell-penetrating peptides and peptide toxins: applications and prospects.

Marine organisms are known to be a rich and unique source of bioactive compounds as they are exposed to extreme conditions in the oceans. The present study is an attempt to briefly describe some of the important membrane-active peptides (MAPs) such as antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) and peptide toxins from marine organisms. Since both AMPs and CPPs play a role in membrane perturbation and exhibit interchangeable role, they can speculatively fall under the broad umbrella of MAPs. The study focuses on the structural and functional characteristics of different classes of marine MAPs. Further, AMPs are considered as a potential remedy to antibiotic resistance acquired by several pathogens. Peptides from marine organisms show novel post-translational modifications such as cysteine knots, halogenation and histidino-alanine bridge that enable these peptides to withstand harsh marine environmental conditions. These unusual modifications of AMPs from marine organisms are expected to increase their half-life in living systems, contributing to their increased bioavailability and stability when administered as drug in in vivo systems. Apart from AMPs, marine toxins with membrane-perturbing properties could be essentially investigated for their cytotoxic effect on various pathogens and their cell-penetrating activity across various mammalian cells. The current review will help in identifying the MAPs from marine organisms with crucial post-translational modifications that can be used as template for designing novel therapeutic agents and drug-delivery vehicles for treatment of human diseases.