SUMMARYChemotaxis enables bacteria to move towards an optimal environment in response to chemical signals. In the case of plantpathogenic bacteria, chemotaxis allows pathogens to explore the plant surface for potential entry sites with the ultimate aim to prosper inside plant tissues and to cause disease. Chemoreceptors, which constitute the sensory core of the chemotaxis system, are usually transmembrane proteins which change their conformation when sensing chemicals in the periplasm and transduce the signal through a kinase pathway to the flagellar motor. In the particular case of the soft-rot pathogen Dickeya dadantii 3937, jasmonic acid released in a plant wound has been found to be a strong chemoattractant which drives pathogen entry into the plant apoplast. In order to identify candidate chemoreceptors sensing wound-derived plant compounds, we carried out a bioinformatics search of candidate chemoreceptors in the genome of Dickeya dadantii 3937. The study of the chemotactic response to several compounds and the analysis of the entry process to Arabidopsis leaves of 10 selected mutants in chemoreceptors allowed us to determine the implications of at least two of them (ABF-0020167 and ABF-0046680) in the chemotaxis-driven entry process through plant wounds. Our data suggest that ABF-0020167 and ABF-0046680 may be candidate receptors of jasmonic acid and xylose, respectively.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.