Vet World   Vol.11   February-2018  Article-17

Antimicrobial peptides of buffalo and their role in host defenses

Background and Aim: Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are highly conserved components of the innate immune system found among all classes of life. Buffalo (Bubalus bubalis), an important livestock for milk and meat production, is known to have a better resistance to many diseases as compared to cattle. They are found to express many AMPs such as defensins, cathelicidins, and hepcidin which play an important role in neutralizing the invading pathogens. Buffalo AMPs exhibit broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Similar to its natural form, synthetic analogs of buffalo AMPs are also antimicrobial against bacteria and even fungus making them a good target for the development of therapeutic antimicrobials. In addition to its antimicrobial effect, AMPs have been demonstrated to have a number of immunomodulatory functions, and their genes are responsive to infections. Further, induction of their gene expression by external factors may help in preventing infectious diseases. This review briefly discusses the AMPs of buffalo identified to date and their possible role in innate immunity.

Keywords: antimicrobial peptides, Bubalus bubalis, cathelicidins, defensin, hepcidin.

How to cite this article: Chanu KV, Thakuria D, Kumar S (2018) Antimicrobial peptides of buffalo and their role in host defenses, Veterinary World, 11(2): 192-200.

Received: 07-10-2017  Accepted: 16-01-2018     Published online: 15-02-2018

Corresponding author: Dimpal Thakuria   E-mail: drdimpal@gmail.com

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2018.192-200

Copyright: Chanu, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.