Protease Inhibitors: Potential and Constraints

Scientific Study from the year 2011 in the subject Biology - Human Biology, , course: Post Graduate Doctoral Studies, language: English, abstract: This book chapter covers the previous and current research on plant protease inhibitors being conducted worldwide since its identification. Plant protease inhibitors exists as natural defense mechanism in plants. Solanaceous plants have highly been explored for the protease inhibitor expression and function against various insects of the order lepidoptera, coleoptera, diptera and many more. Plant protease inhibitors are the well studied class of plant defensive proteins. High level of up-regulation upon insect damage, significantly elevated levels in reproductive and storage organs as well as specificity to pest proteases ascertain their defensive function. In the present chapter, we introduced molecular basis of plant-insect interactions and focused on different classes of protease inhibitors based on their target protease(s).