'Suicide Response' Gives Colorado State Researchers Important Clues On Preventing Bacterial Invasion In Crops...( document this reaction in plants expos...)

document this reaction in plants exposed to gram-positive bacteria. Plant breeders have successfully engineered plants resistant to diseases caused by gram-negative bacteria, which has been a focus of research for a number of years. But gram-positive bacteria have remained a mystery, in part because they are difficult to grow in a laboratory setting and because they grow very slowly, which hinders research.

Yet gram-positive bacteria are a particularly troublesome class of bacteria that cause a wide range of diseases in a number of crops, including wheat, potatoes, alfalfa and apples. Once a crop is infected with a disease caused by a gram-positive bacteria, it is almost impossible to combat or is too costly to treat with chemicals.

"This is an exciting find because the suicide response has been used as a tool for cloning of disease resistance genes from tomato, lettuce and rice," said Carol Ishimaru, a lead researcher on the project and associate professor of bioagricultural sciences and pest management at Colorado State. "Now that we know this suicide response occurs in plants exposed to this specific form of bacteria, we can work on finding ways to develop potato plants that give this suicide response even when they are invaded by bacteria for which they are hosts."

Ishimaru said the suicide response is the result of a sophisticated interplay between plant and bacteria that works like this: When a disease-causing bacteria invades a plant, the plant will only display a suicide response if it has the resistance genes for that bacteria. The plant host manufactures products encoded by resistance genes that recognize specific antivirulence genes, or genes that fight infection, made by the bacteria. In plants that aren't hosts for bacteria--like the tobacco plants used in the Colorado State study--the same defense reaction is triggered but it is not clear what activates the respons
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Contact: Carrie Schafer
CSchafer@vines.colostate.edu
(970) 491-6432
Colorado State University
6-Jan-1998

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