1. Plant Growth-Promoting Genes can Switch to be Virulence Factors via Horizontal Gene Transfer
- Author
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Margarita Stritzler, Nicolás Daniel Ayub, and Gabriela Soto
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,LAP CLUSTER ,Gene Transfer, Horizontal ,Virulence Factors ,Biología ,030106 microbiology ,Soil Science ,Virulence ,Pseudomonas fluorescens ,Erwinia ,ADHESION ,Erwinia pyrifoliae ,Ciencias Biológicas ,03 medical and health sciences ,Bacterial Proteins ,Genomic island ,Gene ,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics ,Phylogeny ,Plant Diseases ,Genetics ,Ecology ,biology ,ERWINIA ,HGT ,biology.organism_classification ,EVOLUTION ,Pectobacterium carotovorum ,Horizontal gene transfer ,Mobile genetic elements ,PSEUDOMONAS ,CIENCIAS NATURALES Y EXACTAS ,Medicago sativa - Abstract
There are increasing evidences that horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is a critical mechanism of bacterial evolution, while its complete impact remains unclear. A main constraint of HGT effects on microbial evolution seems to be the conservation of the function of the horizontally transferred genes. From this perspective, inflexible nomenclature and functionality criteria have been established for some mobile genetic elements such as pathogenic and symbiotic islands. Adhesion is a universal prerequisite for both beneficial and pathogenic plant-microbe interactions, and thus, adhesion systems (e.g., the Lap cluster) are candidates to have a dual function depending on the genomic background. In this study, we showed that the virulent factor Lap of the phytopathogen Erwinia carotovora SCRI1043, which is located within a genomic island, was acquired by HGT and probably derived from Pseudomonas. The transformation of the phytopathogen Erwinia pyrifoliae Ep1/96 with the beneficial factor Lap from the plant growth-promoting bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens Pf-5 significantly increased its natural virulence, experimentally recapitulating the beneficial-to-virulence functional switch of the Lap cluster via HGT. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a functional switch of an individual gene or a cluster of genes mediated by HGT. Fil: Stritzler, Margarita. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Veterinarias y Agronómicas. Instituto de Genética; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina Fil: Soto, Gabriela Cynthia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Veterinarias y Agronómicas. Instituto de Genética; Argentina Fil: Ayub, Nicolás Daniel. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria. Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Veterinarias y Agronómicas. Instituto de Genética; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina
- Published
- 2017