Amyloid peptides with antimicrobial and/or microbial agglutination activity
Chen et al./Springer/2022
Why It Matters
This paper caught my attention because it reframes amyloids—usually associated with Alzheimer's and other diseases—as potentially beneficial antimicrobial agents. Understanding how these peptides naturally fight infections could inform new antibiotic strategies, though this is a review of existing research rather than new experimental data. For now, it's conceptually interesting but doesn't change what you should do today.
Key Findings
- Multiple amyloid peptides across different organisms show direct antimicrobial activity, killing bacteria, fungi, and other pathogens
- Some amyloid peptides work by agglutination—clumping microbes together rather than killing them outright—which may be an overlooked immune mechanism
- The same structural features that make amyloids problematic in neurodegenerative diseases (their ability to form rigid fibers) may be what gives them antimicrobial properties
- Examples span from human proteins like beta-amyloid (associated with Alzheimer's) to bacterial biofilm components, suggesting antimicrobial amyloids evolved independently multiple times
- The dual nature of amyloids—protective against microbes but potentially pathogenic when misregulated—suggests a trade-off between immune defense and disease risk