Plant-virus Resistant Cytosinpeptidemycin: The Chinese Goods among Agricultural Antibiotics

As a fermentation product of microbes, Cytosinpeptidemycin belongs to a cytosine nucleoside peptide antiviral antibiotic, and is mainly used in agriculture in China. Cytosinpeptidemycin is generally recognized as a kind of efficient, low-toxicity, and pollution-free biological pesticide, and it is a Chinese-produced agricultural antibiotic (first developed by Shenyang Bolian Biotechnology Co., Ltd. under Shenyang Association for Science and Technology), making it quite unique among the agricultural antibiotics.

In terms of the antiviral mechanism, Cytosinpeptidemycin is a broad-spectrum antiviral agent, and has good control effects against many plant viruses, especially the tobacco mosaic virus. On the one hand, Cytosinpeptidemycin can directly act on virions in vitro, causing them to lose the infection ability, to thus protect the uninfected plants from the virus infection; on the other hand, Cytosinpeptidemycin also has high protection and treatment effects, and can delay occurrence of symptoms of virus infection, reduce disease severity, inhibit growth of true mycelia, induce plant bodies to produce resistant protein, and enhance individual immunity of plants.

The cytosine analogue Cytosinpeptidemycin is a bioactive secondary metabolite produced by the rare streptomycetes separated and obtained from earth in Liaoning. Production of Cytosinpeptidemycin adopts the bioengineering fermentation technology, which is similar to the industrial production process of most early antibiotics. The structural component contained in Cytosinpeptidemycin that is similar to cytosine can inhibit the plant virus multiplication, and induce plant resistance, etc. For example, as an important crop in the world, rice is the primary food source of half of the world’s population; the Southern rice is susceptible to the black-streaked dwarf virus (BSDV) which belongs to a kind of Reoviridae virus; the epidemic situation caused by that virus was first found in Guangdong Province in 2001, and such rice disease then rapidly spread in Vietnam and China, etc., and caused serious loss of rice yield.

The microbial pesticide Cytosinpeptidemycin has extensive antiviral activity against various plant viruses, such as rice stripe virus and tobacco mosaic virus, however, the fundamental mechanism thereof is still unclear. According to research, Cytosinpeptidemycin can be used to control the BSDV to strengthen plant disease resistance and control effect. In general, the plant viruses infecting the agricultural plants may cause serious crop losses due to a lack of effective control measures. According to research, Cytosinpeptidemycin can up-regulate the virus resistant genes of some plants, increase the defense enzyme activity of peroxidase, superoxide dismutase, and catalase, and can trigger the disease resistance response of plants themselves from proteome, mRNA, and enzyme activity level.

To sum up, Cytosinpeptidemycin is a kind of antiviral biological pesticide first developed in China, belongs to a new cytosine nucleoside antiviral preparation, has certain preventive and therapeutic effects against virus diseases on plants, and is a kind of biological pesticide with great development prospects. Cytosinpeptidemycin can improve the antiviral ability of many plants such as papaya, rice, and tobacco, has good control effects against virus diseases, and has a high environmental friendly degree and low environmental toxicity. Cytosinpeptidemycin, as a new cytosine nucleoside antiviral preparation, can prevent crops from infecting by various plant viruses and treat those infected, and can prolong virus incubation period, destroy virus structure, reduce virion concentration, and improve the antiviral ability of plants, etc., however, the abuse of it shall be guarded against in the agriculture, as the biggest characteristic of viruses is the liability to mutation, and the extensive use of such cytosine antibiotic may promote viruses to evolve. For example, in the science fiction film Interstellar in 2014, the large number of basic crops such as wheat and corn on the earth is successively infected with the plant virus—the mutant and withering virus, and then die out, and eventually, the earth is covered with sand, crops disappear, and human beings are confronted with the extinction and huge global ecological disaster…New research shall be vigilant against such situation.

References

Yu L,Wang W,Zeng S, et al. Label-free quantitative proteomics analysis of Cytosinpeptidemycin responses in southern rice black-streaked dwarf virus-infected rice. Pesticide Biochemistry and Physiology, 2017.