Molecular Mechanism of Plant Infection by Agrobacterium tumefaciens

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This study will examine the potential that an array of molecules with inducing properties involved in bacterial infection of plants exists, and seeks to determine the chemistry, specificity, and roles of these molecules in plant-bacterial interactions. The focus will be identification of signal compounds, the physiological roles of inducers in the plant that produces them, and to a limited extent, the receptors for these inducers. It is expected that such studies at detailed chemical and biological levels will lead to a fuller understanding of events connected with establishment of, or resistance to, bacterial infections in a variety of plants, and be of value in broadening the spectrum of plants that can be transformed by bacteria such as those in the genus Agrobacterium. How plants, and the bacteria able to infect them, communicate with each other at the molecular level to determine susceptibility or resistance to infection is a prime focus of this study. A fuller understanding of these events may lead to the ability to transform plant systems that are now recalcitrant to such genetic change. //