Molecular Mechanism of Plant Infection by Agrobacterium tumefaciens

这项研究将检测一系列具有诱导特性的分子参与植物细菌侵染的可能性，并试图确定这些分子在植物-细菌相互作用中的化学、特异性和作用。重点将是识别信号化合物，诱导剂在产生它们的植物中的生理作用，以及在有限的程度上，这些诱导剂的受体。预计这种详细的化学和生物学水平的研究将使人们更充分地了解与各种植物中细菌感染的建立或抗药性有关的事件，并有助于拓宽可由细菌转化的植物的范围，如农杆菌属的植物。植物和能够感染它们的细菌如何在分子水平上相互沟通，以确定对感染的敏感性或抵抗力是这项研究的主要重点。对这些事件的更全面了解可能会导致改变目前顽固抵抗这种基因变化的植物系统的能力。//

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. //