Phage therapy for plant disease control with a focus on fire blight

Abstract

The concept of using bacteriophages (bacterial viruses) as biocontrol agents in pest management emerged shortly after their discovery. Although research on phage-based biopesticides temporarily stopped with the advent of antibiotics, the appearance of antibiotic resistant bacterial strains led to a renewed interest in phage therapy for control of plant diseases. In the past twenty years numerous successful experiments have been reported on bacteriophage-based biocontrol measures, and several comprehensive studies have recently been published discussing detailed results of phage application practices in pest management, mainly from North American authors. The present review focuses on bacteriophage-mediated control of fire blight (caused by Erwinia amylovora (Burill) Winslow et al.), the most devastating bacterial disease of pome fruits. Research results from North America are discussed along with recent data from European laboratories.

Absence of lysogeny in wild populations of Erwinia amylovora and Pantoea agglomerans

“…Bacteriophages (phages) offer a novel biological control mechanism since they are ubiquitous in the orchard environment, self‐replicating, nontoxic to eukaryotes, biodegradable unlike many agrochemicals and usually species and strain specific with no effect on indigenous bacteria. Phage‐mediated control of fire blight has been studied in laboratory and under field conditions (Erskine, ; Gill et al ., ; Lehman, ; Müller et al ., ; Svircev et al ., 2010; 2011; Boulé et al ., ; Schwarczinger et al ., ; Nagy et al ., ). Erskine () first demonstrated that a temperate phage that lysogenized a yellow saprophytic bacterium reduced fire blight symptoms when co‐inoculated with E. amylovora on pear slices.…”

“…carotovora (Faltus and Kishko, 1980;Ruban et al, 1981;Toth et al, 1993;Tovkach, 2002a,b) and P. agglomerans (previously known as Erwinia herbicola) (Harrison and Gibbins, 1975). Furthermore, the genomes of all fully sequenced E. amylovora phages lack the necessary genes for prophage integration (Lehman et al, 2009;Born et al, 2011;Nagy et al, 2012).…”

The tail‐associated depolymerase of Erwinia amylovora phage L1 mediates host cell adsorption and enzymatic capsule removal, which can enhance infection by other phage

“…Bacteriophages specific for Er. amylovora were first reported several decades ago (Erskine, 1973), and more recently followed by studies regarding their characterization and application to control the pathogen (Schnabel and Jones, 2001;Gill et al, 2003;Born et al, 2011;Boulé et al, 2011;Müller et al, 2011b;Schwarczinger et al, 2011;Nagy et al, 2012). Clearly, the extreme specificity of phages to kill only their host bacteria without affecting other members of the bacterial ecosystem offers significant potential for environmentally friendly pathogen control.…”

Human Phageprints: A high-resolution exploration of oral phages reveals globally-distributed phage families with individual-specific and temporally-stable community compositions

“…These advances collectively paint phages not only as the most numerous and diverse biological entities on our planet, but also as regulators of microbial ecosystems through rapid infection cycles and gene transfer events (3-7). Yet, compared to their bacterial hosts, and despite their proven potential to transform fields such as medicine (8-10), agriculture (11, 12), and biotechnology (13-15), phages are, in general, poorly characterized (16-20).…”