International Journal of Molecular Sciences Review Mammalian Neuropeptides as Modulators of Microbial Infections: Their Dual Role in Defense versus Virulence and Pathogenesis Daria Augustyniak 1,* , Eliza Kramarska 1,2, Paweł Mackiewicz 3, Magdalena Orczyk-Pawiłowicz 4 and Fionnuala T. Lundy 5 1 Department of Pathogen Biology and Immunology, Faculty of Biology, University of Wroclaw, 51-148 Wroclaw, Poland;
[email protected] 2 Institute of Biostructures and Bioimaging, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, 80134 Napoli, Italy 3 Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics, Faculty of Biotechnology, University of Wroclaw, 50-383 Wroclaw, Poland; pamac@smorfland.uni.wroc.pl 4 Department of Chemistry and Immunochemistry, Wroclaw Medical University, 50-369 Wroclaw, Poland;
[email protected] 5 Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine, School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast BT9 7BL, UK;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +48-71-375-6296 Abstract: The regulation of infection and inflammation by a variety of host peptides may represent an evolutionary failsafe in terms of functional degeneracy and it emphasizes the significance of host defense in survival. Neuropeptides have been demonstrated to have similar antimicrobial activities to conventional antimicrobial peptides with broad-spectrum action against a variety of microorganisms. Citation: Augustyniak, D.; Neuropeptides display indirect anti-infective capacity via