 The full length precursor is processed by undetermined proteases present in human sweat, to form several shorter peptides that show variable antimicrobial activity, named according to their C-terminal triplet of amino acids and their residue length.One such active peptide is SSL25, which shows a 2-fold increase in activity against E.coli compared to DCD-1L.The crystal structure of dermicidin has been solved in solution to reveal a hexameric helix-bundle, mediated by Zn ion binding.