The potential role of antimicrobial peptides in preventing and treating fish diseases

4 The potential role of antimicrobial peptides in preventing and treating fish diseases 

Owing to increasing understanding of the importance of AMPs in fish immune systems and the increasing need to find safe, effective natural antimicrobial agents to combat serious disease outbreaks in fish the race to determine and characterize new AMPs has been accelerated and their antimicrobial effects on fish pathogens are being analyzed. 

Several studies, some of them mentioned above, have suggested that some of the antiviral mechanisms of AMPs are due to their action on host cells, rather than in parallel with their direct action to inactivate viral particles. For example, they may make fish cells more resistant to and/or protected from viral infections. Cecropins are a family of linear AMPs initially discovered in giant silk moth (//. with no members found in 

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