%0 Journal Article
%T Antifungal Effect of Chitosan as Ca2+ Channel Blocker
%A Choon Geun Lee
%A Ja Choon Koo
%A Jae Kweon Park
%J Archive of "The Plant Pathology Journal".
%D 2016
%R 10.5423/PPJ.OA.08.2015.0162
%X The aim of this study was to investigate antifungal activity of a range of different molecular weight (MW) chitosan against Penicillium italicum. Our results demonstrate that the antifungal activity was dependent both the MW and concentration of the chitosan. Among a series of chitosan derived from the hydrolysis of high MW chitosan, the fractions containing various sizes of chitosan ranging from 3 to 15 glucosamine units named as chitooligomers-F2 (CO-F2) was found to show the highest antifungal activity against P. italicum. Furthermore, the effect of CO-F2 toward this fungus was significantly reduced in the presence of Ca2+, whereas its effect was recovered by ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, suggesting that the CO-F2 acts via disruption of Ca2+ gradient required for survival of the fungus. Our results suggest that CO-F2 may serve as potential compounds to develop alternatives to synthetic fungicides for the control of the postharvest diseases
%K antifungal activity
%K Ca2+ channel
%K chitosan
%K molecular weight
%K Penicillium italicum
%U https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4892820/