Studies of the functional roles of amphibian skin antimicrobial peptides as the first barrier against infection by environmental microorganisms.

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We have cloned and characterized cDNAs encoding multiple antimicrobial peptide precursors from total RNA samples prepared from the skin and some extradermal tissues such as brain and the Harderian gland of the Japanese Ranid frog species. The synthetic replicates of some of these peptides showed anti-tumor cell activities and/or mast cell-stimulating activities as well as antimicrobial activities. We investigated anti-Escherichia coli activities of the Lys-rich histone H2B and Arg-rich histones H3 and H4 as antimicrobial agents and showed that the mode of their antimicrobial actions depended on their basic amino acid residue contents.