Skin micro-organs from several frog species secrete a repertoire of powerful antimicrobials in culture

Helena Groot*, Carolina Mũoz-Camargo, Johanna Moscoso, Gina Riveros, Vivian Salazar, Franz Kaston Florez, Eduardo Mitrani

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

This work is an attempt to take advantage of the rich biodiversity that exists in Colombia in order to start a systematic analysis of antimicrobial substances that have emerged through amphibian evolution. For this purpose we have developed a technique to grow intact frog skin derived micro-organs (SMOs) in vitro in the absence of serum. We show that in SMOs, the skin glands remain intact and continue to secrete into the medium substances with potent antibacterial activity, for several days in culture. Our strategy has been to create a bank of substances secreted by amphibian skin from different species. This bank contains at present around 50 species and is of particular importance as some of the species are in danger of disappearing. We show that some of the species tested displayed very strong antibacterial activity without being toxic to somatic cell lines, even at 10-fold higher concentration.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)461-467
Number of pages7
JournalJournal of Antibiotics
Volume65
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - 25 Sep 2012

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