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Functional characterization of the recombinant antimicrobial peptide Trx-Ace-AMP1 and its application on the control of tomato early blight disease

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Abstract

Ace-AMP1 is a potent antifungal peptide found in onion (Allium cepa) seeds with sequence similarity to plant lipid transfer proteins. Transgenic plants over-expressing Ace-AMP1 gene have enhanced disease resistance to some fungal pathogens. However, mass production in heterologous systems and in vitro application of this peptide have not been reported. In this study, Ace-AMP1 was highly expressed in a prokaryotic Escherichia coli system as a fusion protein. The purified protein inhibited the growth of many plant fungal pathogens, especially Alternaria solani, Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. vasinfectum, and Verticillium dahliae. The inhibitory effect was accompanied by hyphal hyperbranching for V. dahliae but not for F. oxysporum f. sp. vasinfectum and A. solani, suggesting that the mode of action of Ace-AMP1 on different fungi might be different. Application of Ace-AMP1 on tomato leaves showed that the recombinant protein conferred strong resistance to the tomato pathogen A. solani and could be used as an effective fungicide.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Jingao Dong at Hebei Agricultural University for kindly providing plant fungal pathogens, Dr. Hong Ma at Fudan University for helpful suggestions and manuscript editing, and Dr. Ping Xu at The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation for language revision. This research was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.30370297 and No. 30770425).

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering, Institute of Plant Biology, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, 220 Handan Road, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Yin Wu, Yue He & Xiaochun Ge

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  1. Yin Wu
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  2. Yue He
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  3. Xiaochun Ge
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Correspondence to Xiaochun Ge.

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Wu, Y., He, Y. & Ge, X. Functional characterization of the recombinant antimicrobial peptide Trx-Ace-AMP1 and its application on the control of tomato early blight disease. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 90, 1303–1310 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-011-3166-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-011-3166-x

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