An overview of antimicrobial peptides

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are a class of small peptides that play an important function in the immune systems of different organism. The nonribosomal or ribosomal pathways are used to synthesize AMPs. As per the Antimicrobial Peptide Database (APD), AMPs are majorly obtained from mammals, insects, amphibians, and microorganisms. Based on their activity, antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, and anticancer peptides are the most common types. AMPs primarily act by targeting the membrane, inhibiting protein biosynthesis and affecting the transcription and translational process or by inhibiting nucleic acid biosynthesis by inducing the degradation of nucleic acids to inhibit their biosynthesis. AMPs have shown numerous benefits in immune regulation of human skin, respiratory infections, and inflammatory diseases by the regulation of proinflammatory reactions, recruiting cells, stimulating cell proliferation, promoting wound healing, phenomena of gene expression and killing cancer cells. The applications of AMPs in medicine for dental, surgical, ophthalmological, and wound healing are evolving. Extensive research on developing novel AMPs that can be translated to humans is the need of the hour.