Abstract
Dickeya zeae, a plant soft-rot pathogen, possesses a type III secretion system (T3SS) as one of the major virulence factors, infecting a wide variety of monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants and causing serious losses to the production of economic crops. In order to alleviate the problem of pesticide resistance during bacterial disease treatment, compounds targeting at T3SS have been screened using a hrpA-gfp bioreporter. After screening by Multifunctional Microplate Reader and determining by flow cytometer, five compounds including salicylic acid (SA), p-hydroxybenzoic acid (PHBA), cinnamyl alcohol (CA), p-coumaric acid (PCA), and hydrocinnamic acid (HA) significantly inhibiting hrpA promoter activity without affecting bacterial growth have been screened out. All the five compounds reduced hypersensitive response (HR) on non-host tobacco leaves and downregulated the expression of T3SS, especially the master regulator encoding gene hrpL. Inhibition efficacy of the five compounds against soft rot were also evaluated and results confirmed that the above compounds significantly lessened the soft-rot symptoms caused by Dickeya dadantii 3937 on potato, Dickeya fangzhongdai CL3 on taro, Dickeya oryzae EC1 on rice, and D. zeae MS2 on banana seedlings. Findings in this study provide potential biocontrol agents for prevention of soft-rot disease caused by Dickeya spp.
Highlights
IntroductionGram-negative plant pathogens that cause severe disease in a wide range of plant hosts
Dickeya species are necrotrophic, Gram-negative plant pathogens that cause severe disease in a wide range of plant hosts
New drugs targeting T3SS that can block its function without affecting the growth and survival of bacteria have been found in many bacteria, which undoubtedly becomes a new strategy for the prevention and treatment of bacterial diseases
Summary
Gram-negative plant pathogens that cause severe disease in a wide range of plant hosts. A long-term usage of antibiotics has led to the increasing drug resistance of strains, and the WHO has listed antibiotic resistance as one of the three most important public health threats of the 21st century (Rasko and Sperandio, 2010; WHO, 2014). In this content, it is very important to find new alternative solutions for bacterial disease control
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