Comparative functional studies on the defensive skin secretion peptides of selected Australian and American frogs

• Main Author: Li, Lei
• Published: Queen's University Belfast 2016
• Subjects: 615.3
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.707811

Frog defensive skin secretions have been studied for decades as pharmaceutical components of traditional medicines due to their wealthy possession of wide-spectrum pharmacological effects. With the emergence of antimicrobial resistance generated by over use of conventional antibiotics and the unexpected effects caused by conventional cancer treatments, peptide-based therapeutic candidates from frog skin secretions have become one of the targets for novel drug discoveries. At present, construction of cDNA libraries from different frogs for cloning skin defensive skin secretion peptides has been used in the application of novel peptide discoveries without harming frogs. The genomic studies and peptidomic studies used in parallel on the discovery of novel bioactive peptides from the skin secretion of the selected South American frogs, Phyllomedusa hypochrondrialis and Phyllomedusa sauvagei, and the selected Australian frog, Litoria caeulea, resulted in the identification of 4 novel peptides with different bioactivities. This thesis includes 6 chapters. The general introduction introduces the background information relevant to the project. The general methods describe the general experimental principles and methods in the research. The experimental chapters, from Chapter3 to Chapter 5, report the novel peptides discovered in the research. The general discussion and conclusions summarise the project research. The functional genomic studies between the South American and Australian frogs provided more clues and benefits for cloning novel bioactive peptides from their cDNA libraries, which still require more research. What is strongly believed is that the bioactive peptide discovery will give rise to more improvements in pharmaceutical treatments and clinical applications. The on-going search for novel peptides holds the key to a healthier tomorrow for us all.