Assessment of Proteomics Strategies for Plant Cell Wall Glycosyltransferases in Wheat, a Non-Model Species: Glucurono(Arabino)Xylan as a Case Study

Abstract

The proteome of a tissue is a snapshot of the entire set of proteins expressed by that tissue at a given developmental stage. This set of proteins can be considered as an integrated and complex response of the tissue to a set of environmental and growth conditions. Thus, the analysis of a proteome would provide valuable clues of the physiological status of a tissue (or a cell) at a given time. Proteomics, an expanding scientific field, represents a promising tool to investigate such proteomes in a high-throughput manner. Although proteomics proved to be helpful in elucidating difficult cellular processes, its use in plant cell wall polysaccharides biosynthesis in non-model plants remains challenging. In this chapter, we evaluated the capabilities of two proteomics strategies in identifying specifically three Golgi-resident glycosyltransferases (GTs), TaGT43-4, TaGT47-13, and TaGT75-4, involved in glucurono(arabino)xylan (GAX) biosynthesis in wheat, an economically important nonmodel crop plant (Zeng et al., 2008, 2010). GAX polymer is the second most abundant polymer in the biomass from grass plants and there is an urgent need to elucidate its biosynthetic pathways to allow engineering of plant biomass for biofuel and other human needs (Faik, 2010).