Progress towards Incorporation of Antimicrobial Peptides for Disease Resistance in Citrus

摘要

Antimicrobial peptides play important roles in the innate immune response and can be found to occur in all classes of life, including humans. These peptides are usually small proteins and have an ability to associate with bacterial cell membranes. Antimicrobial peptides are also characterized by their broad spectrum antibiotic property. Citrus canker and Huanglongbing (HLB) are the two major diseases threatening the global citrus industry. All commercial grapefruit, sweet orange and tangerine cultivars are susceptible to these diseases, and it is difficult to create tolerant cultivars via conventional breeding. Incorporation of one or more genes encoding for antimicrobial peptides into the citrus genome via genetic engineering could potentially result in development of cultivars resistant to these diseases, without modifying the varietal fidelity.