Determination of the Biological Activities of Skin Secretions of Some Amphibian Species from Turkey
Project no. 532 · Status: Kapanmış · 2015
Summary
Amphibian skin secretions have traditionally been used in the treatment of some wounds and diseases. Biologically active content that differs from species to species is quite rich especially in terms of peptides / proteins, steroids and alkaloids. Although studies carried out on amphibian skin secretions have increased in other countries in recent years, there are no comprehensive studies on this subject conducted in Turkey. Within the scope of this project, skin secretions of Lycia salamanders and some other amphibian species distributed in the provinces of Burdur, Antalya, Mugla and Izmir were studied. Therefore, two detailed fieldworks were arranged and during the fieldworks, a new endemic subspecies (L. billae eikeae) belonging to the Lycian salamanders was determined and added to Turkey’s amphibian fauna. In addition, new localities were discovered and recorded for the subspecies L. antalyana antalyana, L. a. gocmeni, L. flavimembris flavimembris and L. f. ilgazi. In order to standardize individual differences, the secretion samples collected from various individuals of the same species via very mild electrical stimulation were gathered in the sampling pool and lyophilized to use in the experiments. The amount of protein (Bradford method), SDS - PAGE protein profile, antimicrobial activity, on normal and cancer cell lines were determined for secretions obtained from different species. In addition, amphibian secretions were investigated in terms of the presence of hemolytic effects. Consequently, all of the 19 different skin secretion samples showed a greater or lesser bioactivity. Of the Lycian salamanders, the target group of the project, especially the skin secretion of L. l. luschani showed the highest cytotoxic effect (over A-549 and MPanc-96) whereas of the other amphibian species studied, the skin / parotoid secretion of Bufo bufo showed the highest cytotoxic effect (in all the cell lines studied). Of the skin secretions studied, the skin secretion of pelophylax bedriagae demonstrated the highest antimicrobial activity. The hemolytic activity results revealed that while the skin secretions of Lycian salamanders and Bufo bufo did not have hemolytic activity, skin secretions of the other species had very low hemolytic effect. Keywords: Amphibian, skin secretion, antimicrobial activity, cytotoxicity, hemolytic activity, SDS-PAGE.