Genetically accessible host models are useful for studying microbial pathogenesis because they offer the means to identify novel strategies that pathogens use to evade immune mechanisms, cause cellular injury, and induce disease. We have developed conditions under which the human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa infects Dictyostelium discoideum, a genetically tractable eukaryotic organism. When ...

Plants possess innate immune systems to prevent most potential infections. The ancient and conserved innate immune responses are triggered by microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs) and play important roles in broad-spectrum defenses. However, successful bacterial pathogens evolved type III virulence effectors to suppress MAMP-mediated immunity. To survive, plants further developed highly...

Recently, pathogenicity models that involve the killing of the genetically tractable nematode Caenorhabditis elegans by human pathogens have been developed. From the perspective of the pathogen, the advantage of these models is that thousands of mutagenized bacterial clones can be individually screened for avirulent mutants on separate petri plates seeded with C. elegans. The advantages of usin...

Although the vascular pathogen Fusarium oxysporum is notorious for being causal agent of wilt disease, vast majority F. strains are harmless soil and root colonizers. The latter oxysporum’s often endophytes colonizing roots intracellularly without negatively affecting plant fitness. Actually, most them, like Fo47, beneficial providing biological control to various pathogens. Interestingly, also...

The potential for local adaptation between pathogens and their hosts has generated strong theoretical and empirical interest with evidence both for and against local adaptation reported for a range of systems. We use the Linum marginale-Melampsora lini plant-pathogen system and a hierarchical spatial structure to investigate patterns of local adaptation within a metapopulation characterised by ...

Recognition of an avirulent pathogen stimulates an oxidative burst generating O2- and H2O2, and these reactive oxygen intermediates (ROIs) cue the induction of defense genes and cell death in the development of a restricted lesion. This localized hypersensitive response (HR) is accompanied by the development of systemic acquired resistance to virulent pathogens. Here we show that inoculation of...

Involvement of reactive oxygen species has been implicated in plant defence against pathogens. We report here a novel pathway of H2O2 generation induced by the addition of phosphate in soybean (Glycine max L.) cell suspension cultures. This H2O2 generation was initiated shortly after the addition of phosphate, and lasted only approximately one hour, as opposed to several hours observed during a...

Of 38 isolates of Vibrio vulnificus examined, all avirulent strains produced only translucent colonies. All virulent strains, with the exception of biogroup 2 (eel pathogens), exhibited both opaque and translucent colonies. Isogenic morphotypes were examined for a variety of phenotypic and virulence traits. Only the ability to utilize transferrin-bound iron and the presence of a surface polysac...

A comparison of extracellular proteins of virulent and avirulent Edwardsiella tarda strains revealed several major, virulent-strain-specific proteins. Proteomic analysis identified two of the proteins in the virulent strain PPD130/91 as flagellin and SseB, which are virulence factors in bacterial pathogens. PCR amplification and DNA sequencing confirmed the presence of the genes that encode the...

Trade-offs between virulence (defined as the ability to infect a resistant host) and life-history traits are of particular interest in plant pathogens for durable management of plant resistances. Adaptation to plant resistances (i.e., virulence acquisition) is indeed expected to be associated with a fitness cost on susceptible hosts. Here, we investigated whether life-history traits involved in...