Journal
ARCHIVES OF MICROBIOLOGY
Volume 199, Issue 4, Pages 581-590Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s00203-016-1327-0
Keywords
GFP; Black rot; Crown gall; Plant disease; Plant pathology; Bacterial fitness
Categories
Funding
- Florida Citrus Production Research Advisory Council, FDOC [00079694]
- Instituto Nacional de Investigacion y Tecnologia Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA) project [RTA2006-00149]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Fluorescent proteins have been used to track plant pathogens to understand their host interactions. To be useful, the transgenic pathogens must present similar behaviour than the wild-type isolates. Herein, a GFP marker was used to transform two plant pathogenic bacteria, Agrobacterium and Xanthomonas, to localize and track the bacteria during infection. The transgenic bacteria were evaluated to determine whether they showed the same fitness than the wild-type strains or whether the expression of the GFP protein interfered in the bacterial activity. In Agrobacterium, the plasmid used for transformation was stable in the bacteria and the strain kept the virulence, while Xanthomonas was not able to conserve the plasmid and transformed strains showed virulence variations compared to wild-type strains. Although marking bacteria with GFP to track infection in plants is a common issue, works to validate the transgenic strains and corroborate their fitness are not usual. Results, presented here, confirm the importance of proper fitness tests on the marked strains before performing localization assays, to avoid underestimation of the microbe population or possible artificial effects in its interaction with the plant.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available