Title of Abstract: Bioinformatics approaches to discovering antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) in the American lobster, Homarus americanus
Name of Mentor: Elizabeth Stemmler
Mentor’s Organization or Department: Department of Chemistry, Bowdoin College
Research Abstract: Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) play an essential role in the nonspecific innate immune responses of lobsters. Studying AMPs can provide useful insight into lobster health and for developing novel antibiotics against resistant bacteria. This summer, we used various bioinformatics tools to discover new putative lobster AMPs. By comparing our mass predictions for bioinformatics-derived potential AMP sequences to hemolymph mass spectral (MS) data from previous work in the Stemmler lab, we were able to identify a new putative AMP sequence with a predicted mass within 1 Da of an experimental mass.
Jack Olcott ’22