Design of self-processing antimicrobial peptides for plant protection

Small antimicrobial peptides are excellent candidates for inclusion in self -processing proteins that could be used to confer pathogen resistance in tr ansgenic plants. Antimicrobial peptides as small as 22 amino acids in lengt h have been designed to incorporate the residual amino acids left from prot ein processing by the tobacco etch virus'(TEVs') NIa protease. Also, by min imizing the length of these peptides and the number of highly hydrophobic r esidues, haemolytic activity was reduced without affecting the peptide's an timicrobial activity.