BaAMPs: the database of biofilm-active antimicrobial peptides

Abstract

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are increasingly being considered as novel agents against biofilms. The development of AMP-based anti-biofilm strategies strongly relies on the design of sequences optimized to target specific features of sessile bacterial/fungal communities. Although several AMP databases have been created and successfully exploited for AMP design, all of these use data collected on peptides tested against planktonic microorganisms. Here, an open-access, manually curated database of AMPs specifically assayed against microbial biofilms (BaAMPs) is presented for the first time. In collecting relevant data from the literature an effort was made to define a minimal standard set of essential information including, for each AMP, the microbial species and biofilm conditions against which it was tested, and the specific assay and peptide concentration used. The availability of these data in an organized framework will benefit anti-biofilm research and support the design of novel molecules active against biofilm. BaAMPs is accessible at http://www.baamps.it

Keywords:

• medical biofilms
• antimicrobial peptides
• web database
• anti-biofilm compounds

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr Riccardo Nifosì, Dr Daria Bottai, Dr Lisa Lombardi and Dr Colin Gerard Egan for helpful discussions.

Conflict of interest disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding

This work was supported by funds from Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto Nanoscienze and University of Pisa.

Supplemental material

The supplemental material for this paper is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08927014.2015.1021340