The antimicrobial activity of SJGAP (skipjack tuna GAPDH-related antimicrobial peptide) and four chemical analogs thereof was determined under different physicochemical conditions, including different pH values, the presence of monovalent and divalent cations, and after a heating treatment. The toxicity of these five peptides was also studied with hemolytic activity assays, while their stability under human gastrointestinal conditions was evaluated using a dynamic in vitro digestion model and chromatographic and mass spectrometric analyses. The antibacterial activity of all analogs was found to be inhibited by the presence of divalent cations, while monovalent cations had a much less pronounced impact, even promoting the activity of the native SJGAP. The peptides were also more active at acidic pH values, but they did not all show the same stability following a heat treatment. SJGAP and its analogs did not show significant hemolytic activity (except for one of the analogs at a concentration equivalent to 64 times that of its minimum inhibitory concentration), and the two analogs whose digestibility was studied degraded very rapidly once they entered the stomach compartment of the digestion model. This study highlights for the first time the characteristics of antimicrobial peptides from Scombridae or homologous to GAPDH that are directly related to their potential clinical or food applications.
Keywords: AMPs; GAPDH; SJGAP; antimicrobial activity; antimicrobial peptides; cations; digestibility; hemolytic activity; membrane permeabilization; pH-dependence; salt resistance.