New Recombinant Antimicrobial Peptides Confer Resistance to Fungal Pathogens in Tobacco Plants

Antimicrobial peptides have been long known to confer resistance to plant pathogens. In this study, new recombinant peptides constructed from a dermaseptin B1 (DrsB1) peptide fused to a chitin-binding domain (CBD) from Avr4 protein, were used for Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation of tobacco plants. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), semi‐quantitative RT‐PCR, and western blotting analysis demonstrated the incorporation and expression of transgenes in tobacco genome and transgenic plants, respectively. In vitro experiments with recombinant peptides extracted from transgenic plants demonstrated a significant (P