Quantitative proteome-level analysis of paulownia witches’ broom disease with methyl methane sulfonate assistance reveals diverse metabolic changes during the infection and recovery processes

Paulownia witches’ broom (PaWB) disease caused by phytoplasma is a fatal disease that leads to considerable economic losses. Although there are a few reports describing studies of PaWB pathogenesis, the molecular mechanisms underlying phytoplasma pathogenicity in Paulownia trees remain uncharacterized. In this study, after building a transcriptome database containing 67,177 sequences, we used isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantification (iTRAQ) to quantify and analyze the proteome-level changes among healthy P. fortunei (PF), PaWB-infected P. fortunei (PFI), and PaWB-infected P. fortunei treated with 20 mg L−1 or 60 mg L−1 methyl methane sulfonate (MMS) (PFI-20 and PFI-60, respectively). A total of 2,358 proteins were identified. We investigated the proteins profiles in PF vs. PFI (infected process) and PFI-20 vs. PFI-60 (recovered process), and further found that many of the MMS-response proteins mapped to “photosynthesis” and “ribosome” pathways. Based on our comparison scheme, 36 PaWB-related proteins were revealed. Among them, 32 proteins were classified into three functional groups: (1) carbohydrate and energy metabolism, (2) protein synthesis and degradation, and (3) stress resistance. We then investigated the PaWB-related proteins involved in the infected and recovered processes, and discovered that carbohydrate and energy metabolism was inhibited, and protein synthesis and degradation decreased, as the plant responded to PaWB. Our observations may be useful for characterizing the proteome-level changes that occur at different stages of PaWB disease. The data generated in this study may serve as a valuable resource for elucidating the pathogenesis of PaWB disease during phytoplasma infection and recovery stages.