Overexpression of Camel lactoferricin recombinant peptide in tobacco hairy roots and study of its antimicrobial activity

The application of recombinant DNA leads to production of a large number of therapeutic proteins and peptides. Lactoferricin, a strong cationic peptide N-terminal region of lactoferrin, is produced by a protein-digesting enzyme pepsin. So, this project was done to produce lactoferricin of camel in hairy roots of tobacco and investigate its antibacterial effect. For this reason camel lactoferricin peptide gene sequence was extracted from gene bank and after optimization of codon usage synthesized artificially. The mentioned sequence was subcloned into pBI121expression vector. The recombinant pBI121 vector was transferred to Agrobacterium rhizogenes bacteriumand then was used to produce hairy roots. Hairy roots was evaluated and proved by specific primers of gene which coded lactoferricin peptide. Recombinant peptide of lactoferricin was extracted from hairy roots and evaluated against plant pathogenic bacteria including Pseudomonas syringae, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae, Erwinia amylovora, Xanthomonas citri, Pectobacterium carotovorum by disk diffusion method. The results showed that this peptide was expressed in hairy roots and has significant antibacterial effect.