Exploiting bacteriocins for plant protection against bacterial infections

丁香假单胞菌是一种导致超过28种重要作物患病的细菌，在全球范围内，田地的损失和储存中的腐败造成了数十亿美元的损失。对于一年生作物，主要的感染途径是通过被污染的种子。种子处理市场每年超过580亿美元，但使用化学品或传统抗生素越来越被认为对环境有负面影响。几乎所有的细菌，包括假单胞菌，都会产生杀死相关物种的细菌素和蛋白质抗生素。我们已经从假单胞菌中鉴定出细菌素，并以纯形式生产出来，并证明它们能有效地杀死从受感染作物中分离出来的丁香假单胞菌。当施用于种子时，它们大大减少了丁香属植物的生长。我们建议通过优化处理条件和包衣条件，以及鉴定用于细菌素鸡尾酒的新型细菌素来开发细菌素作为种子处理的应用。

Pseudomonas syringae is a bacterial species that causes disease in over 28 important crops and field losses & spoilage in storage run into $billions worldwide. For annual crops, the primary route of infection is via contaminated seed. The market for seed treatment exceeds $58bn annually but using chemicals or conventional antibiotics is increasingly regarded as having negative environmental consequences. Nearly all bacteria, including Pseudomonas spp., produce bacteriocins, protein antibiotics that kill related species. We have identified bacteriocins from Pseudomonas spp., have produced them in pure form and shown that they effectively kill field isolates of P. syringae isolated from infected crops. When applied to seed they substantially reduce growth of P. syringae. We propose to develop the use of bacteriocins as a seed treatment by optimizing treatment and seed coating conditions and identifying novel bacteriocin species for use in bacteriocin cocktails.