The antifungal effects of Plc-2 are thought to be due to membrane disruption after the accumulation in the plasma membrane of the fungal cell. Thus, the broad activity of this peptide may be helpful to form a leading model for developing new and novel therapeutic agents for public health and could have applications to commercial agriculture. This work received financial assistance from the Science and Technology Ministry of Brazil (MCT), Research Foundation of the State of Rio de Janeiro

(FAPERJ), Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel see more (CAPES), the Brazilian Council for Scientific Research (CNPq) and DYCIT (Uruguay). We thank the platform of peptide synthesis of FIOCRUZ (PDTIS) for the facilities. Thanks are also due to Dr M.C. Lourenço from the Microbiology Department

(Instituto de Pesquisas Evandro Chagas-FIOCRUZ) for the bacterial assays and to Ms Nora Altier and Carolina Leoni from Department of Protección Vegetal (INIA Las Brujas) for the fungal isolates. “
“Animal venoms are sources of biologically active peptides, mainly ion channels toxins. So far several hundreds of peptide sequences have been reported from some of the most studied venomous organisms such as scorpions, snakes, cone snails and spiders [44]. The strategies employed for the discovery of these peptide toxins have generally involved bioassay-guided chromatographic purifications followed by chemical and pharmacological selleckchem characterizations. More recently peptidomic/proteomic Y-27632 2HCl and genomic (transcriptomic) approaches

have converged into venomics to accomplish whole venom analyses that speed up the finding of new peptides and proteins of taxonomical and pharmacological interest [11], [12], [17], [20], [28], [31], [34], [50], [51], [53], [57], [61], [62], [67], [69], [79], [81], [82] and [85], through the combination of advanced liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry and molecular biology techniques. On the other hand, the history of venom analyses in sea anemones is just starting, hitherto comprising only two reports [45] and [85]. After 40 years of bioassay-guided purifications of sea anemones peptide toxins, the first peptidomic analysis of a sea anemone (Bunodosoma cangicum) [85] was reported, allowing the detection of 81 components including 9 novel peptides. Subsequently, 43 novel sequences were discovered by the transcriptomic analysis of Anemonia viridis (formerly Anemonia sulcata) [45]. These two recent studies, together with the long history of bioassay-guided purifications, account for about a total of 150 peptide sequences so far discovered from less than 35 sea anemone species, which have been barely explored since the peptide diversity contained in sea anemones species is highly superior [45] and [85] to the number of toxins currently discovered from them.