The proteome of germlings from urediniospores of Puccinia triticina

Wheat leaf rust is a serious fungal disease of wheat that causes annual losses and necessitates using fungicides for effective disease management. It is caused by Puccinia triticina which spreads by means of airborne urediniospores. When these germinate on the leaf surface, they form germ-tubes which enter the leaf through open stomates. Spores and germ-tubes represent the first fungal structures that the host can perceive during a rust infection. They therefore contain proteins that could potentially trigger early host defense responses. Using 2-DE to separate this proteome, we produced gels containing 173 spots in the pI range of 4-7 and identified 123 proteins. These were predominantly proteins involved in metabolic and cellular processes, but with a large number (77%) of novel proteins that could not be identified through homology matching Twenty four of these showed no homology to wheat sequences, making them good candidate PAMPs.