Exploiting bacteriocins for plant protection against bacterial infections

丁香假单胞菌是一种细菌，可导致超过28种重要农作物的病害，全球范围内农田损失和储藏腐败损失高达数十亿美元。对于一年生作物来说，感染的主要途径是通过受污染的种子。种子处理市场每年超过580亿美元，但人们越来越认为，使用化学品或常规抗生素会对环境造成负面影响。几乎所有的细菌，包括假单胞菌，都会产生细菌素，这是一种杀死相关物种的蛋白质抗生素。我们已经从假单胞菌中鉴定出细菌素，并以纯形式产生细菌素，并表明它们能有效地杀死从受感染作物中分离出来的紫丁香根霉的田间分离株。当它们应用于种子时，它们大大减少了紫丁香的生长。我们建议通过优化处理和种衣剂条件，并确定用于细菌素鸡尾酒的新细菌素种类，来开发细菌素作为种子处理的用途。

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.