Disclosing proteins in the leaves of cork oak plants associated with the immune response to Phytophthora cinnamomi inoculation in the roots: A long-term proteomics approach

Abstract

The pathological interaction between oak trees and Phytophthora cinnamomi has implications in the cork oak decline observed over the last decades in the Iberian Peninsula. During host colonization, the phytopathogen secretes effector molecules like elicitins to increase disease effectiveness. The objective of this study was to unravel the proteome changes associated with the cork oak immune response triggered by P. cinnamomi inoculation in a long-term assay, through SWATH-MS quantitative proteomics performed in the oak leaves. Using the Arabidopis proteome database as a reference, 424 proteins were confidently quantified in cork oak leaves, of which 80 proteins showed a p-value below 0.05 or a fold-change greater than 2 or less than 0.5 in their levels between inoculated and control samples being considered as altered. The inoculation of cork oak roots with P. cinnamomi increased the levels of proteins associated with protein-DNA complex assembly, lipid oxidation, response to endoplasmic reticulum stress, and pyridine-containing compound metabolic process in the leaves. In opposition, several proteins associated with cellular metabolic compound salvage and monosaccharide catabolic process had significantly decreased abundances. The most significant abundance variations were observed for the Ribulose 1,5-Bisphosphate Carboxylase small subunit (RBCS1A), Heat Shock protein 90–1 (Hsp90-1), Lipoxygenase 2 (LOX2) and Histone superfamily protein H3.3 (A8MRLO/At4G40030) revealing a pertinent role for these proteins in the host-pathogen interaction mechanism. This work represents the first SWATH-MS analysis performed in cork oak plants inoculated with P. cinnamomi and highlights host proteins that have a relevant action in the homeostatic states that emerge from the interaction between the oomycete and the host in the long term and in a distal organ.

Large-Scale Protein and Phosphoprotein Profiling to Explore Potato Resistance Mechanisms to Spongospora subterranea Infection

“…Plant leaves can be an important tissue for practical monitoring of infection or resistance. An extensive change in the proteome profile of leaves in response to root infection by soilborne pathogen has been reported before ( Coelho et al, 2021 ). Our results here showed that in both cultivars the amount of chlorophyll content significantly ( p < 0.01) reduced after infection.…”

How to Unravel the Key Functions of Cryptic Oomycete Elicitin Proteins and Their Role in Plant Disease

“…Further use of the iTRAQ method will allow the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms that underlie elicitin-triggered immunity [51]. A study using another proteome tool, SWATH-MS (Sequential Window Acquisition of All Theoretical Mass Spectra) [52], revealed the differential expression of 80 proteins in Q. suber infected with P. cinnamomi that provided insights into the association between pathogen invasion and the subsequent plant response. Another technique that holds prospects for the identification of elicitin functions and proteome relationships is shotgun proteomics [53], which has been used, for example, to detect over 500 different peptides in culture filtrates of the mycorrhizal fungus Rhizophagus irregularis, and which has greatly expanded our knowledge of proteins that are involved in the establishment of symbiosis [54].…”

Regulation of heat shock proteins 70 and their role in plant immunity

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