ABSTRACT
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), a class of short proteins with a broad spectrum of antibacterial activities, are isolated from a wide variety of animals, both vertebrates and invertebrates, and plants as well as from bacteria and fungi. They are a key component of the innate immune response in most multicellular organisms. Owing to their potent, broad-spectrum antibacterial activities and uneasy developing of drug resistance, these peptides are of great clinical significance. However, preparation of AMPs at a large scale is a severe challenge to the development of the commercial products. Undoubtedly, construction of high-level biological expression systems for the production of AMPs is the key in its clinical application process. Herein, we summarize the progress in researches on heterogenous expression of AMPs in prokaryotic expression systems and eukaryotic expression systems.