New Zealand Journal of Botany abstract

Received 9 September 1996; accepted 18 April 1997

Antifungal proteins from seeds of Australian native plants and isolation of an antifungal peptide from Atriplex nummularia

D. I. LAST
D. J. LLEWELLYN

CSIRO Division of Plant Industry
G. P. O. Box 1600
Canberra City
A.C.T. 2601, Australia

Abstract  Extracts from seeds of 69 different species of plants mostly originating from Australia were screened for antifungal agents with activity against the plant pathogens, Fusarium oxysporum fsp. vasinfectum, Rhizoctonia solani, Thielaviopsis basicola, and Verticillium dahliae. Many seed extracts showed inhibitory activity against one or more of the fungi tested. High antifungal activities were detected in the genera Archontophoenix, Atriplex, Alphitonia, Callistemon, and Dodonaea. Only the Atriplex seed extract was shown to contain a protease-sensitive antifungal activity. A 30 amino acid residue peptide (An1) was purified to homogeneity from the seeds of Atriplex nummularia and its in vitro activity against several fungal pathogens of plants was characterised. Amino acid sequence analysis revealed An1 to be homologous to the chitin-binding antimicrobial peptides of Amaranthus caudatus.

Keywords  Australian flora; antifungal; seed protein; Atriplex; antimicrobial peptide

PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (861K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)

This year's abstracts |Journal home page |All abstracts | Publishing home page