Bioinformatic Analysis of Potential Pathogenicity Effectors of <i>Candidatus</i> Liberibacter asiaticus, Causal Agent of Citrus Huanglongbing

Abstract

Huanglongbing (HLB) or citrus greening is currently the most important citrus disease, caused by the bacterium Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas). The impossibility of isolating it causes understanding its pathogenic mechanisms to be a complicated task. Recent studies identified 16 proteins with the signal peptide needed to be secreted in the plant and cause the disease. The present study aims to perform a bioinformatic analysis of these proteins with the function prediction approach by gene ontology (GO) and the detection of conserved domains. It was observed that of the 16 proteins analyzed not all are found in different infective strains reported in the literature. The GO analysis allowed us to relate different proteins with the biological process of energy and pathogenic activity, especially CLIBASIA_03315 and CLIBASIA_05115, respectively. The domain analysis allowed the observation of a β-CA domain, tentatively related to the damage caused to the chloroplast and a PAAR domain associated with the T6SS secretory system. Our results provide information on the possible function of potential pathogenicity effectors in CLas.

Antioxidant gene expression, chlorophyll, and starch content in Persian lime (Citrus latifolia Tanaka Ex Q. Jiménez) trees with HLB by application of elicitors of plant resistance

“…Debido a la naturaleza de CaLas, su aislamiento resulta muy complejo (Ha et al, 2019;Merfa et al, 2019), por lo que, para comprender mejor su capacidad infectiva y el desarrollo de la enfermedad, se ha utilizado un enfoque basado en genómica y bioinformática (Liu et al, 2019;Flores-de la Rosa et al, 2020). Esto ha permitido descubrir proteínas con actividad patogénica que actúan directamente sobre el cloroplasto y lo dañan estructuralmente (Pitino et al, 2016), este daño genera los principales síntomas del HLB, clorosis y acumulación de almidón (Pitino et al, 2018).…”