Development of novel methods for functional evaluation of the signal peptide of secreted protein

Abstract

Abstract Secreted proteins play critical roles in plant-microbe interactions, in which they manipulate host metabolism, defense responses, physiology, etc. Improved methods for identifying pathogens secreted proteins will accelerate biological discoveries in cell signaling and cellular communication. Bioinformatics tools have been used to predict secreted proteins from genomic data, but few methods have been used in experimental identification of secreted proteins. Here, we developed the method based on the Avr3a-R3a interaction, which was verified using different sources of secreted proteins from plant pathogenic fungi. Considering that no cell death was observed when the signal peptides were functional, we also developed another method based on the observation that a PAMP XEG1 can induce cell death extracellularly; this method was also useful for the identification of secreted proteins. Current study provided alternative tools for investigating the function of signal peptides for predicted secreted proteins.