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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, December 2007, p. 8023-8027, Vol. 73, No. 24
0099-2240/07/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/AEM.01414-07
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Novel Candidate Virulence Factors in Rice Pathogen Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzicola as Revealed by Mutational Analysis
Li Wang,
Seiko Makino,
Ashim Subedee, and
Adam J. Bogdanove*
Department of Plant Pathology, 351 Bessey Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011
Received 25 June 2007/
Accepted 19 October 2007

ABSTRACT
Bacterial leaf streak, caused by
Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzicola,
is an important disease of rice. Transposon-mediated mutational
analysis of the pathogen with a quantitative assay revealed
candidate virulence factors including genes involved in the
pathogenesis of other phytopathogenic bacteria, virulence factors
of animal pathogens, and genes not previously associated with
virulence.

INTRODUCTION
Bacterial leaf streak is an important disease of rice (
Oryza sativa) for which control measures are limited (
22). In particular,
no simply inherited gene for resistance to the disease has been
reported. The disease is caused by
Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzicola,
a member of the gamma subdivision of the class
Proteobacteria.
The pathogen enters through leaf stomata or wounds and colonizes
the parenchyma apoplast, causing interveinal lesions that appear
water soaked initially and then develop into translucent, yellow-to-white
streaks. Leaf streak is prevalent in Asia and parts of Africa,
where it can decrease yield by as much as 30%. In the United
States, the pathogen is quarantined and has been designated
a select agent under the Agricultural Bioterrorism Act of 2002.
To lay the groundwork for disease prevention and control strategies
based on interference with bacterial virulence, transposon-mediated
mutational analysis of
X. oryzae pv. oryzicola was carried out
to identify candidate virulence factors.

Identification and characterization of reduced-virulence mutants.
Strain BLS303 of
X. oryzae pv. oryzicola (C. Vera-Cruz, International
Rice Research Institute) was mutagenized by using the EZ::TN
<R6K

ori/KAN-2> Tn
5 insertion kit (Epicentre Biotechnologies),
which generates random, stable insertions. BLS303 cells were
transformed by electroporation as described previously (
30).
Insertion mutants were selected on glucose yeast extract agar
(
18) containing 25 µg/ml kanamycin and then cultured overnight
in liquid glucose yeast extract with kanamycin. Cells were washed
twice and resuspended in sterile water to an optical density
at 600 nm of 0.5 and used to spot infiltrate, in duplicate,
leaves of 4-week-old rice plants of Indica variety IRBB10 with
a needleless syringe. Plants were grown and maintained in a
PGC-105 growth chamber (1,000 µmol/m
2/s; Percival Scientific,
Inc., Perry, IA) under a cycle of 12 h of light at 28°C
and 12 h of dark at 25°C with relative humidity at 75 to
80%. Symptoms were observed after 4 days. Ten thousand mutants
were screened. For 153 mutants, symptoms appeared reduced relative
to the wild type or were absent. These were characterized further
with a more stringent quantitative assay (Fig.
1). In this assay,
leaves of 8-week-old rice plants were inoculated with a mutant
on one side of the midrib and the wild type directly opposite
on the other. For each mutant, five replicate, paired inoculations
on each of two leaves were made. After 10 days, lesion lengths
were measured for each paired inoculation, and a paired, two-tailed
Student
t test was performed across all replicates. By this
test, 21 mutants were confirmed as being virulence impaired
(
P < 0.1). Of these, 6 were completely nonvirulent and 15
(Fig.
2) were reduced in virulence.

Rescue and sequence analysis of disrupted genes.
Each of the 21 mutants contained just one insertion, as determined
by Southern blot hybridization of EcoRI-digested genomic DNA
with the 1-kb XhoI/BamHI fragment of the transposon. To rescue
the DNA containing the transposon, which carries the Pir protein-dependent
origin of replication R6K and the
nptII gene and lacks EcoRI
sites, EcoRI-digested DNA was treated with T4 ligase and electroporated
into
Escherichia coli S17
pir. Transformants were selected
on LB agar containing kanamycin (25 µg/ml). Nucleotide
sequences flanking the transposon were determined with transposon-specific
primers provided with the insertion kit. Insertions were mapped
and oriented by aligning the sequences to the finished whole-genome
sequence of
X. oryzae pv. oryzicola strain BLS256 available
through the Comprehensive Microbial Resource (
www.tigr.org/cmr)
and through the National Center for Biotechnology Information
(GenBank accession no. AAQN01000001), with reference to the
draft annotation for this genome, available through the Comprehensive
Microbial Resource (Fig.
3). Insertions mapped to genes that
encode components of the type III secretion system (T3SS), a
lipopolysaccharide (LPS) synthesis enzyme, a two-component system
response regulator, type IV pilus assembly proteins, enzymes
involved in carbohydrate metabolism, and enzymes for fatty acid
and aromatic amino acid synthesis (Table
1).
BLS256 and BLS303 are both Philippine isolates and are similar
in their degrees of virulence. With three exceptions, the genetic
context of each insertion shown in Fig.
3 is conserved in the
genome of
X. oryzae pv. oryzae strain MAFF311018 (GenBank accession
no. NC_007705) and in most cases in
Xanthomonas genomes less
closely related to
X. oryzae pv. oryzicola (not shown). The
gene content and organization at these loci in BLS303 therefore
are likely to be similarly conserved if not identical to those
in BLS256. The first exception is the LPS biosynthesis locus
(Fig.
3C), which is variable across
Xanthomonas genomes, in
some cases at the interstrain level (P. Patil and R. Sonti,
personal communication). However, long-range, nested PCR amplification
of the locus yielded products identical in size for BLS303 and
BLS256 (L. Chen and A.J.B., unpublished data), indicating that
the locus arrangement in BLS256 is likely shared by BLS303.
The second exception is a small open reading frame upstream
of
rpfG (Fig.
3D) in the annotation of BLS256 that is absent
from the other
Xanthomonas genomes, as annotated. The final
exception is the locus containing the
pgk and
gapA genes (see
Fig.
3I). In other
Xanthomonas genome sequences, including that
of MAFF311018, upstream of
pgk several conserved hypothetical
protein-encoding genes replace
gapA and nearby open reading
frames, and
gapA localizes elsewhere. In MAFF311018,
gapA is
surrounded by insertion sequence elements. Thus, although BLS256
and BLS303 are likely syntenic at this locus, further characterization
of the insertion in
gapA in BLS303, including its potential
effect on genes downstream, will require cloning the locus from
this strain.

Type III secretion genes.
Six insertions mapped to the
hrp/
hrc gene cluster, which encodes
proteins involved in the regulation and assembly of the T3SS,
a macromolecular, syringe-like complex that delivers effector
proteins into host cells. In many plant pathogens, the T3SS
is essential for eliciting the host hypersensitive reaction
and for pathogenicity (
5,
13). In mutant strains 41C9 and 6H4,
the insertions occurred in
hrcU and
hrcV, respectively, which
encode inner membrane components of the complex. The insertions
in mutant strains 42C3, 22H2, 6H7, and 26B10 reside in
hrcC,
whose product is a key outer membrane component. As expected,
and shown previously for
hrcC in BLS303 (
18), each of the six
mutants was nonpathogenic (not shown).

LPS synthesis gene.
LPS is a component of the bacterial cell surface thought to
protect against environmental stresses and antimicrobial compounds
by restricting membrane permeability. It comprises three covalently
linked components: an outer membrane-bound moiety called lipid
A, a core oligosaccharide, and an outermost polysaccharide known
as the O chain (
23). The core and lipid A without the O chain
constitute lipooligosaccharide. In mutant 38C10, the transposon
disrupts the gene
wxocB, which encodes a predicted member of
the rhamnose-glucose polysaccharide assembly protein F (RgpF)
family (
31). Members of the RgpF family are involved in the
assembly of the O chain, but immediately downstream of
wxocB resides
wxocE, which is predicted to be involved in the synthesis
of the core. So the insertion, if polar, might block the assembly
of even lipooligosaccharide. LPS has been implicated previously
in plant pathogenesis owing to the isolation of reduced-virulence
mutants that exhibited LPS deficiencies. Plants recognize certain
LPSs as microbe-associated molecular patterns, triggering innate
defense responses (
17,
26). In the
Rhizobium-legume symbiosis,
structural changes in the O chain take place during nodulation,
suggesting an adaptive role (
15). Changes in LPS structure affect
the efficiency of the T3SS of
Shigella (
30a) and the expression
or function of adhesin, phospholipase A, and other virulence
factors in
Yersinia (
3a). Rice leaves inoculated with 38C10
developed lesions dramatically reduced in length relative to
the wild type. Although structural consequences of the mutation
in this strain and the reason for its reduced virulence remain
to be elucidated, this observation implies that LPS plays a
central role in the virulence of
X. oryzae pv. oryzicola.

Two-component regulatory gene rpfG.
In mutant 25C4, the transposon disrupts
rpfG, which encodes
the regulatory component of the RpfG/RpfC two-component system
that has been shown to positively regulate the synthesis of
virulence factors and dispersal of biofilms in
X. campestris pv. campestris in response to cell-to-cell signaling mediated
by a diffusible signal factor (
25,
29). The mutant caused lesions
in rice leaves about half the length of those caused by the
wild type.

Type IV pilus assembly and twitching motility genes.
Twitching motility in bacteria is movement independent of flagella
that occurs by extension, tethering, and retraction of type
IV pili (
16). Twitching motility plays an important role in
host colonization by several animal pathogens (
20). Reports
on plant-associated bacteria are fewer and, to our knowledge,
limited to bacteria that colonize the vascular system (
6,
14,
21). Six of the mutant strains reported here carry insertions
in type IV pilus assembly and twitching motility genes. In mutants
5G9 and 17B9, the transposons disrupt the coding and promoter
regions, respectively, of
pilY1. Disruption of
pilY1 in
Xylella fastidiosa caused a reduction, but not a complete loss, of type
IV pili and twitching motility (
16). Mutants 14H9 and 25A6 carry
insertions in
pilQ and
pilM, respectively, which reside at either
end of an operon conserved across several species and required
for pilus assembly, twitching motility, and phage sensitivity
(
10,
19,
24). The transposons in mutants 17D5 and 25D2 integrated
within
pilZ and
pilT, respectively. PilZ is a predicted receptor
for the secondary messenger bis-(3'-5')-cyclic dimeric GMP,
which regulates processes such as biofilm formation, twitching
motility, photosynthesis, and virulence (
1,
7,
11).
pilT encodes
a putative hexameric ATPase required for type IV pilus retraction
(
2). With the exception of 25A6, which showed a relatively severe
(greater than 50%) reduction in virulence, the impairment of
the virulence of each of these mutants was slight to moderate.
Nevertheless, to our knowledge, this is the first time that
type IV pili (and twitching motility) have been implicated in
nonvascular plant pathogenesis. The mechanistic basis of this
involvement, whether attachment, motility, biofilm formation,
or some combination, remains to be determined.

Carbohydrate synthesis genes.
Five mutants carry insertions in genes that encode enzymes for
sugar metabolism. In mutant 24A2, the disrupted gene encodes
fructose-bisphosphate aldolase (class I). In mutant 22G10, the
transposon resides in
pgk, which encodes phosphoglycerate kinase.
Mutants 1A8 and 20E6 both carry an insertion in the
gapA gene
for type 1 glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase. Each of
these insertions resulted in moderately to dramatically reduced
lesion lengths in inoculated rice leaves. Interestingly, the
affected genes colocalize in a cluster involved in glycolysis
and gluconeogenesis (
10). Products of
gap,
pgk, and another
gene in the cluster,
pyk, were identified as candidate virulence
factors in
Yersinia pestis by proteomic analysis of the low
calcium response (
9). In
Streptococcus pneumoniae the
gapA gene
product is both cytoplasmic and cell wall associated and contributes
to virulence through a role in plasminogen binding, recruiting
proteolytic activity to the bacterial cell surface important
for invasiveness (
4).
gapA also plays a role in adhesion and
invasiveness in
Paracoccidioides brasiliensis, a fungal pathogen
of humans, possibly by binding to host surface matrix components
(
3). A role for the
gapA product in plant pathogenesis has not
been reported previously. Whether it recruits protease activity
to the
X. oryzae pv. oryzicola cell surface, binds to rice cell
surfaces, or contributes in some other way remains to be determined.
Although functional analysis remains to be done, isolation of
these four mutants suggests that some housekeeping and metabolic
proteins play more complex roles than previously thought. In
the fifth mutant of this class, 24D10, the disrupted gene is
ppsA, which encodes phosphoenolpyruvate synthase A, a key enzyme
in gluconeogenesis.
ppsA was reported as important for virulence
in
X. campestris pv. campestris (
28). In rice leaves inoculated
with 24D10, a slight reduction in lesion length relative to
the wild type was observed.

Other genes.
Two genes identified among the reduced-virulence mutants encode
enzymes for basic metabolism. In mutant 29D3, the transposon
is in a gene that encodes 3-oxoacyl-[acyl-carrier-protein] synthase
III, an enzyme involved in fatty acid and phospholipid biosynthesis.
A homolog of this gene regulates virulence factors in the tobacco
pathogen
Pseudomonas syringae pv. tabaci, potentially through
an effect on the synthesis of acyl homoserine lactones that
are involved in quorum sensing (
27). Acyl homoserine lactone-mediated
quorum sensing has not been reported in any xanthomonads, however.
In mutant 38A5, the disrupted gene encodes the P protein involved
in the prephenate pathway for aromatic amino acid biosynthesis.
Aromatic amino acid auxotrophic mutants of other plant and animal
pathogens also have attenuated virulence (
8,
12). The moderate
reduction in the virulence of mutants 29D3 and 38A5 likely reflects
general defects in cellular physiology.

Conclusion.
Transposon-mediated mutagenesis has been used to identify virulence
factors in many plant-pathogenic bacteria. With our screen for
virulence-impaired transposon insertion mutants of
X. oryzae pv. oryzicola, we identified several factors associated with
virulence in other plant pathogens, including the T3SS, the
rpfG/
rpfC two-component regulatory system, LPS, and type IV
pili. Importantly, to our knowledge, ours is the first reported
indication of a virulence function for type IV pili in a nonvascular
plant pathogen. Also, we identified factors not previously associated
with plant pathogenesis but important or implicated in the virulence
of animal pathogens, namely, selected enzymes for sugar metabolism,
of which some appear also to play roles in binding host substrates
at the cell surface. Finally, we isolated mutants affected in
fatty acid and aromatic amino acid synthesis, processes that
likely contribute to virulence through their roles in basic
metabolism.
In all, despite the large scale of the screen, only 21 mutants were confirmed as virulence impaired. Ten thousand mutants represent roughly twofold coverage for a targeted insertion rate of 1 per 1,000 bp (the genome is just under 5 x 106 bp), so the screen likely was not saturating. Also, leaf-to-leaf variability and the early time point used for scoring in the initial screen might have precluded the capture of subtle virulence deficiencies. These factors were accounted for in the more stringent quantitative assay used for further characterization of mutants. Another possibility is that strains with mutations that have a marked effect on colony size or morphology (e.g., loss of EPS) may have been overlooked. Finally, functional redundancy of some virulence genes may have precluded their isolation.
The genes identified will require confirmation by genetic complementation, since the reduced-virulence phenotypes may be due to polar effects of insertions on downstream genes or to spontaneous ectopic mutations. However, we have observed the transposon to be a nonpolar mutagen when in the forward orientation (Fig. 3; L.W. and A.J.B., unpublished), ostensibly because of the outreading promoter of the terminator-less nptII gene that it contains. Also, for several genes or gene classes, we isolated multiple independent insertions, strongly supporting the conclusions that the insertions are the cause of the virulence deficiencies and that the genes to which they localize are the relevant virulence factors.
X. oryzae pv. oryzicola is a pathogen of emerging importance that constrains production of the world's most important food crop. Because rice is also an important biological model, bacterial leaf streak can serve as a representative system for understanding nonvascular pathogenesis in other plants. The identification of the candidate virulence factors reported here is an important first step toward elucidating molecules and mechanisms important in disease that may be targeted for the development of novel means of control and prevention. It should be noted that the inoculation technique used to identify these factors bypasses survival on the leaf surface and entry into the apoplast. Screening of the mutant library, by alternative methods, for mutants affected in these processes is likely to reveal yet additional virulence factor candidates.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are grateful to J. Helgerson, Z. Sayre, E. Flemmig, J. Paulson,
and J. Lorence for assistance with mutant screening, to K. Vogel
for technical assistance, and to D. Meyer and D. Niño-Liu
for critical reading of the manuscript.
This work was supported by award 0227357 from the Plant Genome Research Program of the National Science Foundation.

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Plant Pathology, 351 Bessey Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011. Phone: (515) 294-3421. Fax: (515) 294-9420. E-mail:
ajbog{at}iastate.edu 
Published ahead of print on 2 November 2007. 
Present address: Cardiovascular Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA 02129. 

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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, December 2007, p. 8023-8027, Vol. 73, No. 24
0099-2240/07/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/AEM.01414-07
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.