Sense the moment: A highly sensitive antimicrobial activity predictor based on hydrophobic moment

Background: Computer-aided identification and design tools are indispensable for developing antimicrobial agents for controlling antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have aroused intense interest, since they have a broad spectrum of activity, and therefore, several systems for predicting antimicrobial peptides have been developed, using scalar physicochemical properties; however, regardless of the machine learning algorithm, these systems often fail in discriminating AMPs from their shuffled versions, leading to the need for new training methods to overcome this bias. Aiming to solve this bias, here we present "Sense the Moment", a prediction system capable of discriminating AMPs and shuffled versions.

Methods: The system was trained using 776 entries: 388 from known AMPs and another 388 based on shuffled versions of known AMPs. Each entry contained the geometric average of three hydrophobic moments measured with different scales.

Results: The model showed good accuracy (>80%) and excellent sensitivity (>90%) for AMP prediction, exceeding deep-learning-based methods.

Conclusion: Our results demonstrate the system's applicability, aiding in identifying and discarding non-AMPs, since the number of false negatives is lower than false positives.

General significance: The application of this model in virtual screening protocols for identifying and/or creating antimicrobial agents could aid in the identification of potential drugs to control pathogenic microorganisms and in solving the antibiotic resistance crisis.

Availability: The system was implemented as a web application, available at <http://portoreports.com/stm/>.