Suh Joon Hyuk, Niu Yue S, Wang Zhibin, Gmitter Frederick G, Wang Yu
Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona , 617 North Santa Rita Avenue, Tucson, Arizona 85721, United States.
Department of Citrus Breeding, The Citrus Research Institute, Southwest University , 2# Tiansheng Rd, Beibei, Chongqing 400715, China.
J Agric Food Chem. 2018 Feb 7;66(5):1296-1304. doi: 10.1021/acs.jafc.7b05273. Epub 2018 Jan 24.
Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas) is the presumed causal agent of Huanglongbing, one of the most destructive diseases in citrus. However, the lipid metabolism component of host response to this pathogen has not been investigated well. Here, metabolic profiling of a variety of long-chain fatty acids and their oxidation products was first performed to elucidate altered host metabolic responses of disease. Fatty acid signals were found to decrease obviously in response to disease regardless of cultivar. Several lipid oxidation products strongly correlated with those fatty acids were also consistently reduced in the diseased group. Using a series of statistical methods and metabolic pathway mapping, we found significant markers contributing to the pathological symptoms and identified their internal relationships and metabolic network. Our findings suggest that the infection of CLas may cause the altered metabolism of long-chain fatty acids, possibly leading to manipulation of the host's defense derived from fatty acids.
