Isolation, Characterization, and Genomic Investigation of a Phytopathogenic Strain ofStenotrophomonas maltophilia

Abstract

Stenotrophomonas maltophilia is ubiquitous in diverse environmental habitats. It alerts significant concern due to its increasing incidence of nosocomial and community-acquired infection in immunocompromised patients and multiple drug resistance. It is rarely reported as a phytopathogen except causing white stripe disease of rice in India and postharvest fruit rot of Lanzhou Lily. Recently, Dickeya zeae and S. maltophilia strains were simultaneously isolated from soft rot leaves of Clivia miniata in Guangzhou, China, and were both demonstrated pathogenic to the host. Compared with the D. zeae strains, S. maltophilia strains propagated faster for greater growth in LB medium and produced no cellulases or polygalacturonases, more proteases and fewer extracellular polysaccharides. Furthermore, S. maltophilia strains swam and swarmed dramatically less on semi-solid media, but formed extraordinarily more biofilms. Both D. zeae and S. maltophilia strains isolated from clivia caused rot symptoms on other monocot hosts, but not on dicots. Similar to previously reported S. maltophilia strains isolated from other sources, strain JZL8 survived under many antibiotic stresses. Complete genome sequence of S. maltophilia strain JZL8 consists of a chromosome of 4,635,432 bp without plasmid. Pan-genome analysis of JZL8 and 180 other S. maltophilia strains identified 50 JZL8-unique genes, seven of which implicates potential contribution of JZL8 pathogenicity on plants. JZL8 also contains 3 copies of T1SS, likely responsible for its greater production of proteases. Findings from this study extend our knowledge on the host range of S. maltophilia and provide insight into phenotypic and genetic features underlying the plant pathogenicity of JZL8.

Stenotrophomonas maltophilia causing maize (Zea mays L.) seedling soft rot disease, an emerging threat to maize crop

“…Hu et al (2021) made a noteworthy discovery concerning S. maltophilia JZL strains. In contrast to typical phytopathogens like Dickeya zeae, these strains exhibited minimal production of plant cell walldegrading enzymes (CWDEs) but significantly higher levels of proteases.Additionally, compared to D. zeae, S. maltophilia strains demonstrated faster growth, produced more proteases, and formed extensive biofilm, especially on monocotyledonous hosts.…”

Isolation and Genome Analysis of Pectobacterium colocasium sp. nov. and Pectobacterium aroidearum, Two New Pathogens of Taro

“…Although SRP pathogens are frequently found to co-exist in the same fields ( Terta et al, 2010 ; Oulghazi et al, 2017 ; van der Wolf et al, 2017 ; Naas et al, 2018 ; Ozturk et al, 2018 ; Portier et al, 2019 ), so far there are only a few reported cases of co-infection ( Ge et al, 2021 ; Hu et al, 2021a ; Motyka-Pomagruk et al, 2021 ). In this study, LJ1 and LJ2 were isolated from the same soft rot taro corm; the two pathogens can infect taro both individually and together, although LJ2 caused more severe disease symptoms than LJ1 at 48-hpi ( Figure 2 ).…”

“…To determine whether strains LJ1 and LJ2 promote or inhibit each other in planta, we measured the bacterial cell numbers by counting their corresponding colony-forming units (CFU) according to the method previously described ( Hu et al, 2021a ; Xue et al, 2021 ). Firstly, we visualized these two strains by, respectively, importing plasmids pBBP gdh (pmCherry) ( Liao et al, 2018 ) and pLAFR3-GFP (pGFP) ( Shi et al, 2019 ) into strains LJ1 and LJ2 by triparental mating with the help of E. coli HB101(RK2013).…”

Microbial Diversity Analysis and Genome Sequencing Identify Xanthomonas perforans as the Pathogen of Bacterial Leaf Canker of Water Spinach (Ipomoea aquatic)

“…Recently, we also isolated two bacterial pathogens from the same diseased rice sample, namely, Enterobacter asburiae and P. ananatis , both of which were determined as the causal agents of rice bacterial blight with no detectable synergistic or antagonistic interactions ( Xue et al, 2020 ). Moreover, Dickeya zeae and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia have been isolated from the same tissue of soft rot leaf of Clivia miniata with no synergism ( Hu et al, 2018 , 2021 ). These, and many other cases, all suggest the common phenomenon of co-infection of two or more pathogens on host plants in nature.…”