Plant Antimicrobial Peptides (PAMPs): Features, Applications, Production, Expression, and Challenges

Abstract

The quest for an extraordinary array of defense strategies is imperative to reduce the challenges of microbial attacks on plants and animals. Plant antimicrobial peptides (PAMPs) are a subset of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). PAMPs elicit defense against microbial attacks and prevent drug resistance of pathogens given their wide spectrum activity, excellent structural stability, and diverse mechanism of action. This review aimed to identify the applications, features, production, expression, and challenges of PAMPs using its structure–activity relationship. The discovery techniques used to identify these peptides were also explored to provide insight into their significance in genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and their expression against disease-causing pathogens. This review creates awareness for PAMPs as potential therapeutic agents in the medical and pharmaceutical fields, such as the sensitive treatment of bacterial and fungal diseases and others and their utilization in preserving crops using available transgenic methods in the agronomical field. PAMPs are also safe to handle and are easy to recycle with the use of proteases to convert them into more potent antimicrobial agents for sustainable development.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis cell-wall and antimicrobial peptides: a mission impossible?

“…Thanks to nanoparticles, the protection of peptides, controlled plasma levels, prolonged and/or controlled release, and reduced administration frequency are becoming possible. These advantages imply lower toxicity to the host ( 195 ), and large-scale synthesis of AMP and biotechnological tools continues to improve ( 196 , 197 ).…”

Nanoparticles in association with antimicrobial peptides (NanoAMPs) as a promising combination for agriculture development

“…In this context, are important highlights the limitations to AMP gene expression in plants and the challenges faced in development and commercialization of transgenic plant lines ( Turnbull et al, 2021 ; Bakare et al, 2022 ; Sharma et al, 2022 ). Although plants are able to express antimicrobial peptides, some pitfalls can be faced, as the production of AMP in all plant structures, difference among expression and difficult to produce active plant AMPs in large quantities due the differences in plant cultivation, and the endogenous AMPs degradation by plant proteases ( Bakare et al, 2022 ).…”

Genetically-clustered antifungal phytocytokines and receptor proteins function together to trigger plant immune signaling

“…This system notably uses defense peptides commonly exhibiting either an antimicrobial activity or an immunomodulatory activity (Tavormina et al ., 2015). Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) possess a cytotoxic activity that targets and directly kills microbes (Bakare et al ., 2022), whereas immunomodulatory peptides (also called phytocytokines analogous to metazoan cytokines) modulate cell immune signaling by binding to specific cell-surface receptors (Yamaguchi & Huffaker, 2011; Hou et al ., 2021; Rhodes et al ., 2021; Rzemieniewski & Stegmann, 2022). In animals, most defense peptides described to date are bi-functional, i.e., they exhibit both antimicrobial and immunomodulatory activities.…”