Polygalacturonase Inhibiting Proteins (PGIPs) of Plants

Polygalacturonase inhibiting proteins (PGIPs) are widely distributed in plants and appear to play an important role in protection of plants from fungal infection and also in maturation and ripening of fruits. They are leucine rich thermostable glycoproteins of about 40 kD and exhibit differential inhibition of polygalacturonases from different sources. A lot of attention is now being paid to these proteins with respect to their physicochemical and biological properties and also to their genes. These proteins show a lot of sequence homology to several signal transduction molecules from diverse species and have been suggested to play a similar role in plants. These proteins are also potentially important from biotechnological perspective. This review focuses on the recent work carried on PGIPs and its implications.