Title
Hydrolysis of Antimicrobial Peptides by Extracellular Peptidases in Wastewater
Abstract
Several antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are emerging as promising novel antibiotics. When released into wastewater streams after use, AMPs might be hydrolyzed and inactivated by wastewater peptidases─resulting in a reduced release of active antimicrobials into wastewater-receiving environments. A key step towards a better understanding of the fate of AMPs in wastewater systems is to investigate the activity and specificity of wastewater peptidases. Here, we quantified peptidase activity in extracellular extracts from different stages throughout the wastewater treatment process. For all four tested municipal wastewater treatment plants, we detected highest activity in raw wastewater. Complementarily, we assessed the potential of enzymes in raw wastewater extracts to biotransform 10 selected AMPs. We found large variations in the susceptibility of AMPs to enzymatic transformation, indicating substantial substrate specificity of extracted enzymes. To obtain insights into peptidase specificities, we searched for hydrolysis products of rapidly biotransformed AMPs and quantified selected products using synthetic standards. We found that hydrolysis occurred at specific sites and that these sites were remarkably conserved across the four tested wastewaters. Together, these findings provide insights into the fate of AMPs in wastewater systems and can inform the selection and design of peptide-based antibiotics that are hydrolyzable by wastewater peptidases.
Keywords
antimicrobial peptidesbiotransformationextracellular enzymeswastewater treatmentLC-HRMS
Object type
Language
English [eng]
Persistent identifier
https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:2045013
Appeared in
Title
Environmental Science & Technology
Volume
58
Issue
1
ISSN
0013-936X
Issued
2023
From page
717
To page
726
Publisher
American Chemical Society (ACS)
Date issued
2023
Access rights
Rights statement
© 2023 The Authors

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