SBIR Phase I: Disease Block: Genetically Engineered Plants with Disease Resistance

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This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project is to perfect a method usingpeptide aptamers expressed in plants that appears to work to control certain bacterialplant pathogens in the genus Xanthomonas. The aptamers block function of criticalpathogenicity (Pth) proteins that are literally injected by the pathogens into plantcells. The objectives are to 1) select better aptamers for capacity to block diseasedevelopment by screening for binding to predicted critical regions on the Pth protein and2) create transgenic citrus plants that express the aptamers for later testing forresistance to citrus canker disease. Phase II funding will be sought to produce and testtransgenic rice and common bean plants genetically engineered to produce the aptamers.Three diseases of economic importance to the U.S. are likely to be controlled by thisnovel genetic mechanism: citrus canker, common bean blight and rice blight. There are nocures, no stable genetic resistance, nor even satisfactory controls for these diseases.The citrus industry and state regulators consider canker control methods to be a toppriority. Localized losses of citrus, bean and rice due to these three diseases can be upto 50%, 20% and 100%, respectively. Applications to other diseases are likely by this newgene engineering technology.