Abstract

ROJAS ARIAS, ADRIANA CAROLINA  and  ZAMORA ESPITIA, HUMBERTO MIGUEL. Plant Defensins and Their Potential Use as Pest Control in Agriculture. Acta biol.Colomb. [online]. 2010, vol.15, n.3, pp.33-46. ISSN 0120-548X.

ABSTRACT Plants, as all organisms in nature, have elaborate systems of defense against pathogens; which can be physical or chemical and produced in a constitutive and induced way. Among the induced chemical barriers, there is a group of low molecular weight proteins, known as antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). These peptides include defensins, which are peptides with a molecular weight about 5 to 7 kDa, isoelectric point of 9, and length of about 45 to 55 amino acids. Likewise, they have the ability to avoid the growth of phytopathogenic microorganisms, mainly funguses. Moreover, these peptides create resistance to abiotic conditions of stress in plants. This manuscript seeks to make a clear and current description about the recent characteristics and researches related to plant defensins and their most significant uses in pathogens management in crops of economical relevance. It also intends to go deep into the study of such proteins in order to use them as a control strategy, such as production of transgenic plants and microorganisms.

Keywords : plant defensins; antimicrobial peptides; plant resistance; transgenic.

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