De Novo Design of Antimicrobial Peptides With a Special Charge Pattern and Their Application in Combating Plant Pathogens
Eric H. -L. Chen, Cheng‐Wei Weng, Yimin Li, Ming‐Chin Wu, Chien‐Chih Yang, Kung‐Ta Lee, Rita P.‐Y. Chen, Chiu‐Ping Cheng
Abstract
Plant diseases are important issues in agriculture, and the development of effective and environment-friendly means of disease control is crucial and highly desired. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are known as potential alternatives to chemical pesticides because of their potent broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity and because they have no risk, or have only a low risk, of developing chemical-resistant pathogens. In this study, we designed a series of amphipathic helical peptides with different spatial distributions of positive charges and found that the peptides that had a special sequence pattern “BBHBBHHBBH” (“B” for basic residue and “H” for hydrophobic residue) displayed excellent bactericidal and fungicidal activities in a wide range of economically important plant pathogens. The peptides with higher helical propensity had lower antimicrobial activity. When we modified the peptides with a long acyl chain at their N-terminus, their plant protection effect improved. Our application of the fatty acyl-modified peptides on the leaves of tomato and Arabidopsis plants lessened the infection caused by Pectobacterium carotovorum subsp. carotovorum and Botrytis cinerea . Our study provides important insights on the development of more potent novel AMPs for plant protection.