Abstract: Antimicrobial peptide (AMP) could kill bacteria, which had been used as a natural preservative and potential alternative to antibiotics. To understand whether the CecropinXJ could effectively inhibit bacteria from palm skin, we used sterile water to swab hands and treated with swabbed liquor by different concentrations of CecropinXJ in this study. The antimicrobial activity was evaluated by plate count method. The results showed that the growth of bacteria derived from palm skin could be effectively inhibited via adding different concentrations of CecropinXJ, and the antimicrobial activity became stronger with increasing the concentrations of CecropinXJ. When the concentration of CecropinXJ was up to 0.4%, its inhibitory capacity could be comparable to commercial hand sanitizer (P>0.05). Further study elucidated that swabbed liquor included most of gram-negative bacteria through 16S rDNA sequence analysis. These findings suggested that CecropinXJ could be used as a novel disinfector or cleanser for application potentially.

Key words: CecropinXJ; palm surface bacteria; plate count; gram-negative bacteria