Novel surfactant peptide for removal of biofilms

Conventional chemical surfactants attach on blots randomly, accompanied with health and environmental issues. To address this, a surfactant peptide was designed to mimic chemical surfactants with an affinity binding peptide as a hydrophobic tail for the cleanup of biofilm contaminations. The micelle forming and structural changes of the peptide in aqueous solution were systematically investigated. More importantly, the biofilm removal efficiency toward Escherichia coli O157:H7 biofilm reached 75% in neutral aqueous solutions at the concentration of 125 mg/L (critical micelle concentration 91 mg/L), a significant improvement in comparison to conventional surfactants and random surfactant peptide. The dynamic removal process reported by confocal laser scanning microscope (CLSM) also displayed the different constituents of biofilm blots, which associated with surfactant peptide binding efficiency. Hopefully, this surfactant strategy will eventually provide new scopes in the design of surface active biological agents.