Jelleine 1 – Other Categories

Jelleines are a family of very small (8-9 amino acid residues long) host defence peptides (HDPs) isolated from the royal jelly of honey bees (Apis mellifera). Jelleines do not present any similarity with other HDPs from other honeybees and are produced by the workers and secreted into Royal Jelly and provide abroad-spectrum protection of the bee hive against microbial infections. The Jelleines are not considered cytolytic or directly involved with inflammatory effects. Jelleine-I may be produced by tryptic digestion of MRJP-1 (produced in the hypopharyngeal glands of the worker honeybee and secreted into the royal jelly), followed by an exoproteinase action on N-terminal of the tryptic fragment. Jelleine-I is only 953.24-Da and exhibits excellent anti-microbial activity against both gram positive and gram negative bacteria and fungi. Jelleine-I increases the production of cellular ROS and binds with genomic DNA, which may contribute to its anti-fungal activity. PLEASE NOTE that in several published articles the sequence of Jelleine-I has been printed as PFKLSLHL -NH2, due to a mistake in the original reference: Fontana et al., (2004). The correct sequence, is PFKISIHL-NH2.