Mass spectrometry-based proteomics for the detection of plant pathogens

Plant diseases caused by fungi, oomycetes, viruses, and bacteria are devastating both to the economy and to the food supply of a nation. Therefore, the development of new, rapid methods to identify these pathogens is a highly important area of research that is of international concern. MS-based proteomics has become a powerful and increasingly popular approach to not only identify these pathogens, but also to better understand their biology. However, there is a distinction between identifying a pathogen protein and identifying a pathogen based upon the detection of one of its proteins and this must be considered before the general application of MS for plant pathogen detection is made. There has been a recent push in the proteomics community to make data from large-scale proteomics experiments publicly available in the form of a centralized repository. Such a resource could enable the use of MS as a universal plant pathogen detection technology.