Insect Antimicrobial Peptides as New Weapons Against Plant Pathogens

Abstract

One action to furnish the increasing demand for food and feed of the growing world population is to reduce yield losses caused by plant diseases. Biotechnology helps to generate crop plants with improved resistance against pathogenic bacteria, fungi, and pests. The expression of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) from various sources is a promising approach to pursue strengthening plant health in a sustainable way. Antimicrobial peptides from insects have been shown to be effective also against bacterial and fungal plant pathogens. In the 1990s cecropin was the first AMP from insects that was ectopically expressed in various crops such as potato or rice to improve their disease resistance. Since then many efforts have been made to optimize AMPs from insects for their use in plant protection. For instance, sequence optimization to stabilize the peptides in plant cells or fusion of different peptides to combine their antimicrobial capabilities resulted in more efficient antimicrobial activity. Here, we summarize examples for strategies to use AMPs in plant biotechnology. Furthermore, we highlight some future tactics to use AMPs from insects to improve plant health in modern cropping systems on the basis of their significant effectiveness, their remarkable specificity, and their obvious economical potential.