Proteomics of plant pathogenic fungi

Plant pathogenic fungi cause important yield losses in crops. In order to develop efficient and environmental friendly crop protection strategies, molecular studies of the fungal biological cycle, virulence factors, and interaction with its host are necessary. For that reason, several approaches have been performed using both classical genetic, cell biology, and biochemistry and the modern, holistic, and high-throughput, omic techniques. This work briefly overviews the tools available for studying Plant Pathogenic Fungi and is amply focused on MS-based Proteomics analysis, based on original papers published up to December 2009. At a methodological level, different steps in a proteomic workflow experiment are discussed. Separate sections are devoted to fungal descriptive (intracellular, subcellular, extracellular) and differential expression proteomics and interactomics. From the work published we can conclude that Proteomics, in combination with other techniques, constitutes a powerful tool for providing important information about pathogenicity and virulence factors, thus opening up new possibilities for crop disease diagnosis and crop protection.