Xylella fastidiosa is a plant pathogenic bacterium that lives inside the host xylem vessels, where it forms biofilm believed to be responsible for disrupting the passage of water and nutrients. Here, Nicotiana tabacum was infected with X. fastidiosa, and the spatial and temporal changes in the whole-leaf ionome (i.e. the mineral and trace element composition) were measured as the host plant tra...

The availability of the genome sequence of the bacterial plant pathogen Xylella fastidiosa, the causal agent of citrus variegated chlorosis, is accelerating important investigations concerning its pathogenicity. Plant vessel occlusion is critical for symptom development. The objective of the present study was to search for information that would help to explain the adhesion of X. fastidiosa cel...

The phytopathogen Xylella fastidiosa grows as a biofilm causing vascular occlusion and consequently nutrient and water stress in different plant hosts by adhesion on xylem vessel surfaces composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, pectin and proteins. Understanding the factors which influence bacterial adhesion and biofilm development is a key issue in identifying mechanisms for preventing biofilm f...

The genome of the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa contains four ORFs (XF2721, XF2725, XF2739 and XF0295) related to the restriction modification type I system, ordinarily named R-M. This system belongs to the DNA immigration control region (ICR). Each ORF is related to different operon structures, which are homologues among themselves and with subunit Hsd R from the endonuclease coding genes. In a...

It is well known that citrus plants that have been infected by Xylella fastidiosa display nutritional deficiencies, probably caused by production of extracellular polymers by the bacteria that block normal nutrient flow through the xylem. The aim of this work was to study the mineral composition of specific foliar areas in different stages of infection in citrus. Thus, the concentrations of mac...

In silico mining of EST data, Real Time PCR, and Affymetrix GeneChip technology was used to characterize the transcriptional response of Vitis vinifera to the Pierce's disease (PD) pathogen Xylella fastidiosa (Xf). We have determined that susceptible V. vinifera responds to Xylella infection with a massive re-direction of gene transcription. This transcriptional response includes the up regulat...

Vector transmission of bacterial plant pathogens involves three steps: pathogen acquisition from an infected host, retention within the vector, and inoculation of cells into susceptible tissue of an uninfected plant. In this study, a combination of plant and artificial diet systems were used to determine the importance of several genes on the initial adhesion and retention of the bacterium Xyle...

Documenting the role of novel mutation versus homologous recombination in bacterial evolution, and especially in the invasion of new hosts, is central to understanding the long-term dynamics of pathogenic bacteria. We used multilocus sequence typing (MLST) to study this issue in Xylella fastidiosa subsp. pauca from Brazil, a bacterium causing citrus variegated chlorosis (CVC) and coffee leaf sc...

Almond leaf scorch (ALS) disease has emerged recently as a serious threat to almond production areas throughout California’s San Joaquin Valley (5,36). This disease is caused by the xylem-limited bacterium Xylella fastidiosa, which also causes several plant diseases in California including Pierce’s disease (PD) of grape, oleander leaf scorch (OLS), and alfalfa dwarf (AD). X. fastidiosa bacteria...

Abstract Xylella fastidiosa is a plant-pathogenic bacterium that lives inside host xylem vessels, where it forms biofilm which believed to be responsible for disrupting the passage of water and nutrients. Pectobacterium carotovorum Gram-negative plant-specific causes not only soft rot in various plant hosts, but also blackleg potato by cell wall degradation. Chagas disease, caused Trypanosoma c...