What is it about?
Plants can detect the presence of some bacteria and activate an immunity program that limits a disease process and suppresses the growth of bacteria. However, some bacteria inject proteins into the plant that modify plant components needed for immunity, a process that allows the bacteria to cause disease. This work showed that one of the proteins injected into tomato by the bacteria Pseudomonas syringae has two main functions. Specifically, it modifies (by acetylation) host immunity proteins to prevent their ability to detect the bacteria and it modifies its own bacterial proteins to prevent their detection by the host.
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Why is it important?
Our finding shows that self modification of injected proteins by pathogenic bacteria may be as important as host modification for promoting disease.
Perspectives
Researchers should be alert to the multiple ways that proteins from bacteria can act so that predictions about whether agricultural plants can maintain or lose their immunity can be made.
Professor Jean Greenberg
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Pseudomonas syringae effector HopZ3 suppresses the bacterial AvrPto1–tomato PTO immune complex via acetylation, PLoS Pathogens, November 2021, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1010017.
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