First report of antifungal activity conferred by non-conventional peptides

Peptides are generally composed of 2-100 amino acid residues and well known as key regulators of many physiological processes (Tavormina et al., 2015" Wang et al., 2020a). Conventional peptides have been found to exhibit pronounced antifungal activities and are relatively safe for the environment and human health (Marcos et al., 2008" Ribeiro et al., 2013). Therefore, antifungal peptides, as novel fungicides, are promising alternatives for combating the increased incidence of antibiotic resistance in plant pathogenic microbes. Recently, non-conventional peptides (NCPs), a novel class of peptides derived from previously unannotated CDSs, have attracted significant attention (Wang et al., 2020b). Studies have demonstrated that NCPs play essential roles in various biological processes (Khitun et al., 2019" Plaza et al., 2017). However, antifungal activity of NCPs has not been reported to date.