Staphylococcus epidermidis Epidermin

Epidermin, a member of the Type-A family of lantibiotics. Epidermin is a tetracyclic peptide (Mr 2.2 kDa) isolated from Staphylococcus epidermidis with antimi-... 

Fig. 7. Alignment of leader peptides of class lA, and class lAn lantibiotics and class 11 non-lantibiotic bacterlocins. Lantibiotics with class lAj leaders include nisin A and nisin Z from different strains of Lactococcus lactis [83], subtilin from Bacillus subtilis [84], epidermin, gal-lidermin and Peps from various Staphylococcus epidermidis strains [29,90,188], Lantibiotics with class lAn leaders include lacticin 481 (lactococcin DR) from L. lactis [211], streptococcin A-FF22 from Streptococcus sp. [199], salivaricin A from Streptococcus salivarius and cytolysin LI and L2 from Enterococcus faecalis [122]. Bacteriocins of the non-lantibiotic class 11 type include leucocin A from Leuconostocgelidum [69], lactococcin A, B and M from L. lactis [46,125,126,135,136],pediocin PA-1 from Pediococcus acidilactici [130], and sakacin A and lactacin F from Lactobacillus sp. [43,203]...

Peschel A, Gotz F (1996) Analysis of the Staphylococcus epidermidis genes epiF, -E and -G involved in epidermin immunity.) Bacteriol 178 531-536... 

Augustin J, Rosenstein R, Wieland B, Schneider U, SchneU N, Engelke G, Entian K-D, Gotz F (1992) Genetic analysis of epidermin biosynthetic genes and epidermin-negative mutants of Staphylococcus epidermidis. Eur J Biochem 204 1149 -1154... 

Quite recently it has been found that the sequence of 21 amino acids of a lantibiotic, epidermin from Staphylococcus epidermidis is encoded on a structural gene in the bacterium as a 52-amino-acid pre-peptide which is processed to the 21-peptide amide antibiotic. The actual sequence of epidermin contains the precursor amino acids Ser, Thr and Cys, from which the unusual amino acid constituents are derived [62]. This ribosomal mechanism is a very surprising observation since the accepted view so far has been that microbial peptides are usually biosynthesized by the thiotemplate pathway (p. 208). 

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