Construction, mechanism, and antibacterial resistance insight into polypeptide-based nanoparticles.

The emergence of drug-resistant bacteria poses a serious threat to public health. The traditional antibiotics have specific intracellular targets and disinfect via chemical ways, which easily lead to the development of drug resistance, therefore, cationic peptides as promising antibiotic agents have attracted extensive attention due to their unique properties. Herein, we report a class of amphiphilic peptide-based pectinate polymers with primary amino groups. The polymers spontaneously self-assembled into the positively charged nanoparticles, which were evaluated and confirmed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and dynamic light scattering (DLS). Biological assays revealed that the nanoparticles showed broad-spectrum antibacterial efficacy against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, exhibiting a MIC of 16 μg mL