Proteome Profiling of Paulownia Seedlings Infected with Phytoplasma

Abstract

Phytoplasma is an insect-transmitted pathogen that causes witches' broom disease in many plants. Paulownia witches' broom is one of the most destructive diseases threatening Paulownia production. The molecular mechanisms associated with this disease have been investigated by transcriptome sequencing, but changes in protein abundance have not been investigated with isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation. Previous results have shown that methyl methane sulfonate (MMS) can help Paulownia seedlings recover from the symptoms of witches' broom and reinstate a healthy morphology. In this study, a transcriptomic-assisted proteomic technique was used to analyze the protein changes in phytoplasma-infected Paulownia tomentosa seedlings, phytoplasma-infected seedlings treated with 20 and 60 mg·L−1 MMS, and healthy seedlings. A total of 2,051 proteins were obtained, 879 of which were found to be differentially abundant in pairwise comparisons between the sample groups. Among the differentially abundant proteins, 43 were related to Paulownia witches' broom disease and many of them were annotated to be involved in photosynthesis, expression of dwarf symptom, energy production, and cell signal pathways.

Comparative Analysis of MicroRNA Expression in Three Paulownia Species with Phytoplasma Infection

“…To reveal the important factors for PaWB occurrence, in our laboratory, we have investigated the transcriptome, DNA methylation, metabolome, and proteome of the three Paulownia species [18,19,[55][56][57]. Most of these researches have indicated that photosynthesis is arrested in PaWBinfected seedlings, which is similar to what was reported in other phytoplasma-infected plants [58,59].…”

“…MiRNAs play important roles in hormone medicated morphology development [69]. In our previous proteome and miRNA sequencing studies of paulownia-phytoplasma interactions, we detected changes in gibberellins and brassinosteroids, and abscisic acid biosynthesis in response to phytoplasma infection [23,56]. A previous transcriptome study identified two key cytokinin biosynthesis enzymes that were obviously induced [19].…”

“…In our previous transcriptome research, we identified genes that were differentially expressed in photosystem I and photosystem II, and were associated with decreased photosynthesis [18,19,55]. In the previous proteome study, we not only detected differentially abundant proteins associated with the above two photosynthesis units, but also found that the amounts of differentially abundant proteins changed in electron transfer and chloroplast development in response to phytoplasma infection [56,57]. Although previous researches also investigated changes in miRNA expression in phytoplasma infected PT, PF, and PTF seedlings, the relationship between photosynthesis and changes of miRNAs has not been reported.…”

Integrated analysis of full-length transcriptome and secondary metabolism reveals novel regulation in Paulownia fortunei infected with phytoplasma

“…From the physiological aspects, we obtained auxin, and amino acids decrease [ 7,8], whereas cystine catalase, auxin oxidase, and vitamin C oxidase increase [ 8,9]. In addition, we identified genes, proteins, and metabolites that responded to phytoplasma infection [10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. However, short-read sequence needs to be assembled into full-length transcripts, which lose a lot of alternative splicing (AS).…”

Long Non-Coding RNAs Responsive to Witches’ Broom Disease in Paulownia tomentosa

“…Rifampicin treatment can make PaWB-infected Paulownia recover to normal morphology [13]. Furthermore, the rapid development of 'omics' has allowed for the investigation of the transcriptomes [3,[14][15][16][17][18], microRNAs (miRNAs), degradomes [19][20][21][22], and proteomes [4,23] of Paulownia species, and the results have revealed changes after PaWB infection at transcriptional, post-transcriptional, and translational levels.…”