Proteomics identifies infection-specific proteins of Rhizoctonia solani, insight into adaptation to different plant hosts and a thaumatin that enhances host susceptibility.
J. ANDERSON (1), J. Hane (2), T. Stoll (3), N. Pain (1), M. Hastie (3), P. Kaur (1), C. Hoogland (4), J. Gorman (3), K. Singh (1) (1) CSIRO Agriculture, Australia; (2) Curtin University, Australia; (3) QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Australia; (4) QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Australia

Rhizoctonia solani is an important root infecting pathogen of a range of food staples worldwide including wheat, rice, maize, soybean, potato and others. Conventional resistance breeding strategies are hindered by the absence of tractable genetic resistance in any crop host. Understanding the biology and pathogenicity mechanisms of this fungus is important for addressing these disease issues, however, little is known about how R. solani causes disease. This study applied mass spectrometry based proteomics to identify soluble, membrane-bound and culture filtrate proteins produced under wheat infection and vegetative growth conditions. Many of the proteins found in the culture filtrate relating to plant cell wall modification, including several found under infection conditions. Other infection related proteins had redox associated functions and many novel proteins without functional classification. The majority of infection proteins tested were confirmed to show transcript up-regulation during infection including a thaumatin which increased susceptibility to R. solani when expressed in Nicotiana benthamiana. In addition, analysis of expression during infection of different plant hosts highlighted how the infection strategy of this broad host range pathogen is adapted to optimise infection of the particular host being encountered. Data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD002806.

Abstract Number: P9-238
Session Type: Poster