Similarities were found for the peptides P2 and P3, from the P. brasiliensis transcriptome, for the histone h2 and a ribososomal protein S12, respectively, of several fungi

species. Nevertheless, no identity Entinostat ic50 was observed for peptides reported here with antimicrobial peptides classes previously described. In order to investigate whether the peptides could cause some hemolytic effect, they were incubated for 0.5 h, 3 h, and 6 h with the red blood cells (RBCs) in saline solution (NaCl 0.9%) phosphate buffer saline (pH 7.2). The pattern of hemolysis resulting from the incubation of RBCs with the peptides P1, P2, P3, and P4, are depicted in Fig. 1. Since no differences were observed between peptide concentrations tested (64, 128, and 256 μg ml−1) or between the times observed (0.5 h, 3 h, 6 h), only results for the highest concentration (256 μg ml−1) and for the most Dabrafenib extended incubation

time (6 h) are presented here. The distilled water was used as positive control and considered to cause 100% hemolysis due to the rupture caused by the osmotic pressure on the RBCs. The saline solution was used as negative control which causes a minimum osmotic pressure across the cell membrane of RBCs maintaining the integrity of cell membrane. None of the peptides presented hemolytic effect when compared to the positive control. The peptides P3 and P4, that presented the higher levels of hemolysis, did not show significant difference even when compared with the saline solution. The data therefore, indicate that the predicted peptides did not cause RBCs lysis. The

peptides P1, P2, P3 and P4 were tested in order to investigate the in vitro antimicrobial activity against the human pathogenic fungi C. albicans and P. brasiliensis isolates Pb01 and Pb18. Two different HDAC inhibitor protocols were used, which differ from each other on the incubation time used, as described in the Materials and Methods section. Table 1 shows that two of four selected peptides exhibited antifungal activity against C. albicans, determined by the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 82 μM and 133 μM for peptides P1 and P2, respectively. The MIC indicates the required amount of the active compound to kill or inhibit the growth of the microorganisms. The control for the assay used was amphotericin B, MIC 0.5 μM. Another control used against this pathogen was the killer peptide (KP), which presented MIC value of 1 μM. Moreover, the four peptides tested exerted no detectable antifungal activity against P. brasiliensis even at the highest concentration (256 μM) utilized in the assay for both of the protocols as indicated in Table 1. Considering that the incubation time could be influencing on the peptide activity by its degradation, the Protocol II was used. This protocol was adapted from another assay to test the peptide KP, also used as control here, against P.