Defence cascade in Verticillium-infected grafted tomato.

In tomato the Ve1-gene provides resistance to the vascular pathogen, Verticillium dahliae, race 1; ve1 plants are susceptible. Reciprocal grafts of resistant and susceptible tomato near-isolines were used to examine proteomic changes and, in particular, the effect of the Ve1-gene on the defence/stress protein cascade induced during Verticillium wilt. Based on label-free LC-MS, the results indicate that this defence response is cell-specific, correlates with overall fungal colonization and is mitigated by Ve1 function. The influence of the Ve1-gene in resistant tissues, however, is not actually transferred to susceptible tissues in the grafted plant.