Isolamento em cromatografia de imunoafinidade e atividade antifúngica de osmotinas de fluidos laticíferos

Abstract

Plants are constantly exposed to a variety of stresses conditions. However, they react to biotic stresses by triggering a set of defense mechanisms including the synthesis of defensive substances as the pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins. The PR-protein named osmotin can be induced under osmotic stress and water shortage conditions. Osmotin-like proteins have been purified from latex and some of them are related to antifungal activity. The aim of this study was to investigate the osmotin in the following species laticifers: C. grandiflora, P. rubra, T. peruviana, H. drasticus and C. papaya to isolate and evaluate its antifungal activities. Immunoaffinity column chromatography with anti-CpOsm antibodies were performed in order to purify these osmotin-like. They were detected in latex of C. grandiflora and P. rubra by immunoassays the ELISA, Dot Blot and Western Blot using anti-CpOsm antibody (the osmotin of C. procera latex). Osmotin of C. procera, C. grandiflora, P. rubra and H. drasticus were identified by mass spectrometry. However, the osmotin from C. procera was co-purified with cysteine proteases. The co-purified cysteine protease from C. procera was identified as Procerain B. The alignment and the 3-D structure analysis of Procerain B and CpOsm revealed the presence of a similar sequence in both proteins. This sequence might be an epitope which allows the anti-antibody recognition. The osmotin from C. grandiflora, and P. rubra did not show antifungal activity against Fusarium solani and Colletotrichum gloesporioides. Since no correlation between the antifungal activity and the presence of these osmotins were found, the proteolytic activities of these latex protein fractions were evaluated in order to correlate with the antifungal activity C. procera and C. grandiflora showed a strong proteolytic activity. In latex, the cysteine proteases are more often related to antifungal activity than osmotin, which might explain, at least in part, the antifungal activity performed by C. grandifora and not for its osmotin. Further studies on the role of osmotin in physiology laticifers plants are needed.