I-Corps: Combinatorial phage display for the development of specific, single target biopesticides against invasive plant pathogens

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project will be the establishment of a process to develop and rapidly create environmentally friendly biological fungicides to solve worldwide problems related to fungal plant pathogens. These pathogens can threaten agricultural crops worldwide. Bacterial and fungal pathogens are diverse and evolve natural resistance to both pesticides and resistance genes incorporated into crops by plant breeders.

Because of the widespread occurrence of fungal diseases on crop plants and the negative effects of fungicides on a range of organisms, there is a need to develop more environmentally friendly approaches to controlling fungal plant pathogens. Agricultural industries worldwide have problems with fungal diseases which reduce yield, lead to the destruction of crops, and result in substantial lost revenue.

This project aims to establish a platform to develop and rapidly deploy biological fungicides to reduce the impact that fungal pathogens have on agricultural crops.

This I-Corps project will develop the use of combinatorial phage display for the rapid screening, development, and deployment of specific, single target biopesticides against new and invasive plant pathogens. This innovation was demonstrated to be a powerful tool for selecting peptides with an affinity to many different types of biological materials including small molecules and whole cells.

It is anticipated that using phage display will rapidly identify peptides that are effective at interfering with pathogen function. Previous work indicates that roughly 50% of peptides selected with this method bind strongly to a specific plant pathogen and have a negative impact on pathogen virulence. The project will use artificial intelligence-based computational approaches to optimize peptide design and efficacy.

It is anticipated that the proposed biopesticides will not persist in the environment and will be unlikely to be toxic to humans or other organisms because of their specificity to  the targeted  pathogens.

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.