Integrons in Xanthomonas pathovars: Do they have a role in plant pathogenicity?

黄单胞菌属的细菌引起植物的严重疾病，鉴定是基于它们最初从植物物种中恢复。黄原体含有整合子，能够获得和表达多种基因的遗传元件。在其他细菌群中，整合子的基因含量在同一物种的菌株之间差异很大，在许多情况下，这些基因编码细胞表面蛋白。这些特征正是我们所期望的植物和细菌之间相互作用的原因。本项目旨在检测大量的黄原体整合子，并确定特定的整合子基因含量是否与宿主-病原体特异性相关。

Bacteria in the genus Xanthomonas cause serious diseases of plants, identification being based on the plant species from which they were originally recovered. Xanthomonads contain integrons, genetic elements capable of acquiring and expressing diverse genes. In other bacterial groups, the gene content of integrons varies significantly between strains of the same species, and in many cases these genes code for cell surface proteins. These characteristics are precisely those we might expect to be responsible for interactions between plants and bacteria. This project aims to examine a large collection of xanthomonads for integrons, and determine whether particular integron gene contents are associated with host-pathogen specificity.