Metabolic response of tomato leaves upon different plant-pathogen interactions.
BACKGROUND
Plants utilise various defence mechanisms against their potential biotic stressing agents such as viroids, viruses, bacteria or fungi and abiotic environmental challenges. Among them metabolic alteration is a common response in both compatible and incompatible plant-pathogen interactions. However, the identification of metabolic changes associated with defence response is not an easy task due to the complexity of the metabolome and the plant response. To address the problem of metabolic complexity, a metabolomics approach was employed in this study.


OBJECTIVE
To identify a wide range of pathogen (citrus exocortis viroid, CEVd, or Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato)-induced metabolites of tomato using metabolomics.


METHODS
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy in combination with multivariate data analysis were performed to analyse the metabolic changes implicated in plant-pathogen interaction.


RESULTS
NMR-based metabolomics of crude extracts allowed the identification of different metabolites implicated in the systemic (viroid) and hypersensitive response (bacteria) in plant-pathogen interactions. While glycosylated gentisic acid was the most important induced metabolite in the viroid infection, phenylpropanoids and a flavonoid (rutin) were found to be associated with bacterial infection.


CONCLUSIONS
NMR metabolomics is a potent platform to analyse the compounds involved in different plant infections. A broad response to different pathogenic infections was revealed at metabolomic levels in the plant. Also, metabolic specificity against each pathogen was observed.
Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular de Plantas, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Camino de Vera s/n 46022 Valencia, Spain.
M Pilar
MP
López-Gresa
Federica
F
Maltese
José María
JM
Bellés
Vicente
V
Conejero
Hye Kyong
HK
Kim
Young Hae
YH
Choi
Robert
R
Verpoorte
D002853:Chromatography, Liquid; D054884:Host-Pathogen Interactions; D018551:Solanum lycopersicum / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000382:microbiology; D009682:Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy; D018515:Plant Leaves / Q000378:metabolism*