The correlation between severity of disease symptoms and the accumulation of viral antigen and acidic pathogenesis-related proteins in the leaves of thorn- apple plants infected with different isolates of potato virus X

Sapotsky M.V., Romanova S.A., Polyakova A.M., Malinovsky V.I.

Journal of Phytopathology 2005; 153(7-8): 440-444

The isolates of potato virus X causing disease symptoms of different severity in thorn-apple plants (Datura stramonium L.) can be categorized in terms of the increase in antigen accumulation, as follows: strong, medium and weak. Extracts from leaves of healthy plants and of those infected with separate virus isolate did not differ in set of acidic pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins as shown by discontinuous non-denaturating polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Within 2 weeks after inoculation the total content of PR-proteins in leaves of plants infected with weak or medium isolates was higher than in the healthy ones but after 3 weeks these differences became negligible. The plants infected with the strong isolate had higher total content of PR-proteins than healthy plants and plants infected with weak or medium isolates during 3 weeks. It is proposed that the greater the damage to the plant caused by virus infection, the more PR-proteins are accumulated. © 2005 Blackwell Verlag.

DOI 10.1111/j.1439-0434.2005.00997.x