Proteins Related to the Biocontrol of Pythium Damping-off in Maize with Trichoderma harzianum Rifai

Induced resistance has been evidenced as one of mechanisms of Trichoderma to control plantdiseases, however, no study showed the change of host proteomics in Trichoderma-induced resistance ofmaize against damping-off caused by Pythium ultimum Trow. The mechanism of Trichoderma harzianumRifai for controlling maize seedling disease caused by Pythium ultimum Trow was investigated firstly byproteome technique and the result suggested that T. harzianum strain T22 was not only able to promoteseedling growth but also protein accumulation. One-dimensional electrophoresis assay showed that morebands appeared on the gel with T22 or T22 combined with P. ultimum (T22 P. ultimum) treatment than withother treatments. Enzyme assay showed that two chitinases of the root sample were more activated in thetreatments with T22 than in the other treatments without T22. Proteins in the seedling roots from the varioustreatments were separated through protein extraction and 2-D electrophoresis technique. In the seedlingsproduced from the T22-treated seeds, there were 104 up-regulated proteins and 164 down-regulated pro-teins relative to the control, and 97 and 150, respectively, after treatment with T22 P. ultimum; however,with P. ultimum alone the values were much lower than with the other two treatments. The correlationcoefficient values were 0.72, 0.51 and 0.49 for the comparison of protein spot distribution on gel amongcontrol with T22, P. ultimum and T22 P. ultimum, respectively. So it seemed that P. ultimum infection wasmore effective than T22 in interfering with the host proteome profile. Furthermore, analysis with MALDI-TOF-MAS showed that some important proteins associated with defensive reactions were identified in T22or T22 P. ultimum treatments, including endochitinase, pathogenesis-related protein PRMS (pathogenesis-related maize seed), GTP-binding protein, isoflavone reductase and other proteins related to respiration. Allthose proteins are probably part of the network of resistance or development-related proteins. Interestingly,P. ultimum treatment resulted in elimination of pathogenesis-related protein PRMS on gel, and thereforedamping-off could be in part attributed to inhibition of the expression of this protein by P. ultimum infection.Some unknown proteins are also related to the defensive reaction of the host.