Time-course Investigation of Phytophthora infestans infection of potato leaf from three cultivars by quantitative proteomics

Potato Late blight is one the most important crop diseases worldwide. Even though potato has been studied for many years, the potato disease late blight still has a huge negative effect on the potato production. A total of three commercially available field potato cultivars of different resistance to late blight infection: Kuras (moderate), Sarpo Mira (highly resistant) and Bintje (very suseptable) under controlled green house growing conditions innoculated with a diversity of P. infestans populations. We used label-free quantitative proteomics to investigate the infection with P. infestans in a time-course study over 258 hours. Several key issues limits proteome analysis of potato leaf tissue4–6. Firstly, the immense complexity of the plant proteome which is further complicated by the presence of highly abundant proteins, such as ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RuBisCO). Secondly, plant leaf and potato in particular contain abundant levels amounts of phenols and polyphenols which hinder or, unless precautions are taken, completely prevent a successful protein extraction.