Abstract
The Solanaceae is an important plant family that has been playing an essential role in traditional medicine and human nutrition. Members of the Solanaceae are rich in bioactive metabolites and have been used by different tribes around the world for ages. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) from plants have drawn great interest in recent years and raised new hope for developing new antimicrobial agents for meeting the challenges of antibiotic resistance. This review aims to summarize the reported AMPs from plants of the Solanaceae with possible molecular mechanisms of action as well as to correlate their traditional uses with reported antimicrobial actions of the peptides. A systematic literature study was conducted using different databases until August 2019 based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. According to literature, a variety of AMPs including defensins, protease inhibitor, lectins, thionin-like peptides, vicilin-like peptides, and snaking were isolated from plants of the Solanaceae and were involved in their defense mechanism. These peptides exhibited significant antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral activity against organisms for both plant and human host. Brugmansia, Capsicum, Datura, Nicotiana, Salpichora, Solanum, Petunia, and Withania are the most commonly studied genera for AMPs. Among these genera, Capsicum and the Solanum ranked top according to the total number of studies (35%–38% studies) for different AMPs. The mechanisms of action of the reported AMPs from Solanaceae was not any new rather similar to other reported AMPs including alteration of membrane potential and permeability, membrane pore formation, and cell aggregation. Whereas, induction of cell membrane permiabilization, inhibition of germination and alteration of hyphal growth were reported as mechanisms of antifungal activity. Plants of the Solanaceae have been used traditionally as antimicrobial, insecticidal, and antiinfectious agents, and as poisons. The reported AMPs from the Solanaceae are the products of chemical shields to protect plants from microorganisms and pests which unfold an obvious link with their traditional medicinal use. In summary, it is evident that AMPs from this family possess considerable antimicrobial activity against a wide range of bacterial and fungal pathogens and can be regarded as a potential source for lead molecules to develop new antimicrobial agents.
Highlights
Misuse or overuse of antibiotics is becoming the major contributing factor for the ever-increasing antimicrobial resistance (Chandra et al, 2017)
We have summarized the reported antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) from plants of the Solanaceae and pointed out the possible molecular mechanisms to correlate the ethnobotanical uses with their antimicrobial action
These data demonstrated that a variety of AMPs have been isolated with significant antimicrobial activity from plants of the Solanaceae including defensins, protease inhibitor, lectins, thionin-like peptide, vicilin-like peptide, snaking, and others
Summary
Misuse or overuse of antibiotics is becoming the major contributing factor for the ever-increasing antimicrobial resistance (Chandra et al, 2017). Several genera of the Solanaceae, such as Capsicum, Datura, and Solanum, have been reported to possess AMPs and peptide rich extract from seeds, leaf or fruit, tuber of these species These peptides have been reported to have significant antibacterial, antifungal, or antiviral activities against both phytopathogenic and human pathogenic strain (Table 1). The reported AMP rich extracts belong to different categories include acidic, basic, protease inhibitor, and trypsin inhibitors (Sarnthima and Khammuang, 2012; Moulin et al, 2014; Muhammad et al, 2019) The mechanism of their action was not clear, it was reported that antibacterial activity could be due to changes in membrane permeabilization (Muhammad et al, 2019) and antifungal activity could be owing to inhibition of fungal growth and hyphae formation (Maracahipes et al, 2019).
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