Antimicrobial and Other Oligopeptides of Grapes

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A. A. Zamyatnin^1,2* and O. L. Voronina²

¹Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, Departamento de Informatica, El Centro Cientifico Tecnologico de Valparaiso, av. Espana 1680, Valparaiso, Chile; fax: (5632) 265-4783; E-mail: alexander.zamyatnin@usm.cl

²Bach Institute of Biochemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninsky pr. 33, 119071 Moscow, Russia; fax: (495) 954-2732; E-mail: aaz@inbi.ras.ru

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received January 9, 2009; Revision received September 14, 2009

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Structures and functions of about 700 oligopeptides of various plants are presently known. However, only one polypeptide has been isolated from grapes and characterized. At the same time, tens of thousands of uncharacterized amino acid sequences have been revealed in this plant, among which there can also be precursors of oligopeptide regulators. Due to the scientific and practical importance of innate immunity of agricultural plants, we have undertaken structural and functional investigation of these sequences to identify new regulatory oligopeptides including antimicrobial agents. For this purpose, we elaborated a special method of computer analysis enabling comparison of primary structures of putative precursors of grape oligopeptides with amino acid sequences of known oligopeptides of other plants. Structural similarity served as the basis for prediction of potential functional properties. As a result, over 20 new structures of antimicrobial and other grape oligopeptides have been found.

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KEY WORDS: oligopeptide, grape, precursor, antimicrobial peptide, bioinformatics

DOI: 10.1134/S0006297910020124

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