Hidden antibiotics in the human proteome

A method for computationally identifying candidate encrypted peptides with predicted antimicrobial activity comprising:

• i) identifying a peptide segment of a first protein sequence from the human proteome, the segment being defined by a first sequence window of 5 to 80 amino acids in length, wherein the first residue within the sequence window represents the first residue within the protein sequence;
• ii) assigning the identified peptide segment a score based on a scoring function that determines mean hydrophobicity, net charge, and length of the peptide, increases the determined mean hydrophobicity by 0.9, increases the determined net charge by 1.1, and multiples all obtained values linearly;
• iii) identifying a further peptide segment of the protein sequence, the further peptide segment also being defined by the first sequence window length, but wherein the first residue within the sequence window for the further peptide segment represents the second residue within the protein sequence;
• iv) assigning the further identified peptide segment a score based on said scoring function;
• v) conducting additional scans of the protein sequence until all segments defined by the sequence window have been identified, and assigning each of the identified segments a score based on the scoring function;
• vi) ranking all identified segments by score;
• and,
• vii) repeating each of steps i)-vi) for all protein sequences from the human proteome;
• wherein the segments that are ranked among the top 1,000 using the scoring function represent the candidate encrypted peptides for the first sequence window length.