Transgenic crops are widely cultivated in several countriesto control crop losses due to insects and weeds.  However, disease resistant transgenic cropsthat can withstand infections due to fungal and bacterial pathogens are not yetavailable due to several reasons. The primary reasons are 1) hostplant-pathogen interaction is a very complex phenomenon and it is oftencrop/variety or pathogen/strain�specific.; 2) natural antimicrobial proteinsand peptides are unstable, lack specificity and may be toxic to non-targetspecies; 3) large scale production of antimicrobial proteins and peptides arevery expensive and 4) microbial pathogens can develop resistance to natural proteinsand peptides.  Recent advances incombinatorial chemistry and automated peptide synthesis have paved the way forrational design of stable, potent, and novel synthetic peptides withtarget-specific biological activity. Some of these lytic synthetic peptides have been already expressed intransgenic plants with varying degrees of success towards control of fungal andbacterial plant pathogens including some fungal pathogens that causecontamination of food and feed crops with mycotoxins.  In our laboratory, transgenic cotton plantsexpressing a synthetic peptide, D4E1, have been shown to control severalphytopathogens including Aspergillusflavus, the source of aflatoxin contamination in cottonseed meal.  Ourresearch results on the effective use of synthetic lytic peptides in transgenicplants with an objective of controlling crop losses due to microbialphytopathogens and mycotoxin producing fungi such as Aspergillus and Fusariumwill be presented.

Transgenic expression of lytic peptides for elimination of mycotoxins in food and feed crops

240th National Meeting (2010)

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