Heterologous expression of a broad-spectrum chimeric antimicrobial peptide in Lactococcus lactis: Its safety and molecular modeling evaluation

Over the last decade, global increase in antibiotic consumption is a major concern in the word. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) known as potential alternative and were considered as a safe antimicrobial agent. However, current approaches for production and purification of AMPs are costly and time-consuming. Here we show that heterologous expression of a chimeric peptide was successfully developed in Lactococcus lactis as a safe and cost-effective recombinant protein expression platform. Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of His-tag purified peptide was determined against a broad spectrum of human pathogenic bacteria consistence of Gram-positive, Gram-negative and resistance strains in deferent range from 7.24 ± 0.4 to 156.24 ± 3.0 μg/mL. Furthermore, our results showed that the peptide was not toxic to HEK and HeLa cells and even at concentrations as high as 250 μg/mL exhibited minimal hemolysis against RBCs. Additional characteristics such as thermal, protease and 50% human plasma stability were determined for cLFchimera. Molecular modeling analysis demonstrated that fusion of His-tag to the C-terminal of chimeric peptide increased peptide stability during 10 ns simulation in water. Overall, the chimeric peptide has a considerable antibacterial activity with low hemolysis, low or none in toxicity and good temperature resistance and also high stability in serum. We anticipate the established expression system could be developed and used more effectively in probiotic strains in future studies.