title: Unlocking the puzzling biology of the black Périgord truffle Tuber melanosporum.
abstract: The black Périgord truffle (Tuber melanosporum Vittad.) is a highly prized food today, with its unique scent (i.e., perfume) and texture. Despite these attributes, it remains relatively poorly studied, lacking "omics" information to characterize its biology and biochemistry, especially changes associated with freshness and the proteins/metabolites responsible for its organoleptic properties. In this study, we have functionally annotated the truffle proteome from the 2010 T. melanosporum genome comprising 12,771 putative nonredundant proteins. Using sequential BLAST search strategies, we identified homologues for 2587 proteins with 2486 (96.0%) fungal homologues (available from http://biolinfo.org/protannotator/blacktruffle.php). A combined 1D PAGE and high-accuracy LC-MS/MS proteomic study was employed to validate the results of the functional annotation and identified 836 (6.5%) proteins, of which 47.5% (i.e., 397) were present in our bioinformatics studies. Our study, functionally annotating 6487 black Périgord truffle proteins and confirming 836 by proteomic experiments, is by far the most comprehensive study to date contributing significantly to the scientific community. This study has resulted in the functional characterization of novel proteins to increase our biological understanding of this organism and to uncover potential biomarkers of authenticity, freshness, and perfume maturation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences, Macquarie University , NSW 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: Mohammad Tawhidul
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Islam
authors.forename: Abidali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mohamedali
authors.forename: Gagan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Garg
authors.forename: Javed Mohammed
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Khan
authors.forename: Alain-Dominique
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Gorse
authors.forename: Jeremy
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Parsons
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Marshall
authors.forename: Shoba
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ranganathan
authors.forename: Mark S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Baker
mesh_terms: D005656:Fungal Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D015870:Gene Expression; D016681:Genome, Fungal; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation; D009812:Odorants / Q000032:analysis; D020543:Proteome; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D004718:Saccharomycetales / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D005656:Fungal Proteins; D020543:Proteome