ABSTRACT
Antimicrobial peptides, a cluster of small peptides secreted by the majority of creatures, have been demonstrated with activity against a wide range of microorganisms including bacteria, protozoa, yeast, fungi, viruses and even tumor cells. These peptides have some features such as broad spectrum , high effi-cacy and stability, little drug resistance. A lack of new antibiotics combined with emerging multi-drug resis-tance issues demands that new antimicrobial strategies be explored for treating these infections. It has been proposed that the antimicrobial peptides might form the foundation for a new class of clinically useful an-timicrobials. We review the advantages of these molecules in construction features and bioactivity, with the focus on the mechanism and clinical applications.
ABSTRACT
Purple bacteria are extensively used in bacterial photosynthesis research. This review describes the structure of light-harvesting I, light-harvesting II and reaction center of photosynthetic apparatus of pur- ple bacteria and discusses the regulation mechanisms of photosynthesis (PS) gene transcription, with an emphasis laid on the transcriptional regulation of PS gene by PpsR/AppA system.