Lipid transfer proteins (LTPs) belong to a group of proteins which occur widely in higher plants. Owing to their in vitro activity of transferring lipids between membranes, they were originally postulated to facilitate intracellular lipid transfer in vivo (Kader, 1975, 1996). However, later evidence that they were synthesized with an N‐terminal signal peptide and localized extracellularly contradicts this hypothesis (Thoma et al., 1993). Therefore, other functions were suggested, including participating in defense reactions against plant pathogen attack (Molina et al., 1993; Garcia‐Olmedo et al., 1995; Maldonado et al., 2002) and transporting of cutin monomer to aid in cuticle formation (Hollenbach et al., 1997). The facts that several LTPs in maize, barley and pepper leaves were induced by pathogen infection (Molina and Garcia‐Olmedo, 1993; Molina et al., 1993; Park et al., 2002), some LTP isoforms in radish and sugar beet were demonstrated to inhibit the growth of bacterial and fungal pathogens in vitro (Terras et al., 1992; Nielsen et al., 1996) and high accumulation of LTPs occurs over exposed surfaces are consistent with the defensive role of LTPs (Thoma et al., 1993; Kader, 1996).
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Ge et al. (2003) studied this question.