SBIR Phase II: Development of eco-friendly peptide bioprotectant for devastating late blight control

该小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力将是控制多种作物上的几种关键病原体和害虫，以帮助更可持续地养活不断增长的世界人口。全球农作物病虫害防治格局正面临巨大挑战：许多疾病没有得到很好的控制，重要的化学农药因其毒性而受到限制或禁止。迫切需要新型的疾病控制产品，这些产品将是有效的，不会损害环境或人类健康。该提案将导致开发一个平台，可以快速生成新产品，以针对控制不力的病原体，减轻耐药病原体的发展。这一解决方案将提高农民的生产力，减少他们的经济损失，同时确保更安全的粮食供应。拟议的项目将确定生态安全的肽，将保护作物免受疾病的侵害。这些肽将被设计为结合并干扰疾病生物体产生的蛋白质的功能，并且这些蛋白质是疾病过程所必需的。这些肽将被设计为仅与这些蛋白质结合，因此它们不会产生脱靶效应。快速设计和测试这些肽的能力将使靶向病原体的多种蛋白质成为可能，从而降低病原体产生耐药性的风险。它还可以针对具有类似生命周期的各种疾病，为农民提供广泛的保护。该项目将选择最佳的靶蛋白，设计肽，并优化肽以最大限度地结合靶点。这些肽将在实验室中测试其预防感染的能力，然后将在更大规模生产并在田间条件下进行测试。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will be to control several critical pathogens and pests on multiple crops, in order to help feed the growing world population more sustainably. The global crop pest and disease control landscape is facing big challenges: many diseases are not well controlled and important chemical pesticides are restricted or banned due to their toxicity. There is a critical need for new types of disease control products that will be effective and will not harm the environment or human health. This proposal will lead to the development of a platform that can quickly generate new products to target poorly controlled pathogens, mitigating the development of resistant pathogens. This solution will increase farmers’ productivity and reduce their financial losses, while ensuring a more secure food supply.The proposed project will identify ecologically-safe peptides that will protect crops from diseases. The peptides will be designed to bind to, and interfere with, the function of proteins that the disease organisms produce, and which are essential to the disease process. The peptides will be designed to bind only to those proteins, so they will not have off-target effects. The ability to rapidly design and test such peptides will make it possible to target multiple proteins from a pathogen, reducing the risk that the pathogen will develop resistance. It will also be possible to target a wide range of diseases with similar life cycles, providing farmers with broad protection. The project will choose the optimum target proteins, design the peptides, and optimize the peptides to maximize binding to the targets. The peptides will be tested for their ability to prevent infection in the lab, and then will be produced at a larger scale and tested under the field conditions. The peptides will also be tested for safety as required for regulatory approval.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.