Researchers identify amino acid change that allows pathogens to jump from one plant to another

(Phys.org) —A research team with members from the U.K., Germany and the U.S. has identified an amino acid sequence in effector proteins in two pathogens that helps explain how a firmly established pathogen can leap from one plant to another. In their paper published in the journal Science, the team describes genomic research they conducted on two types of well-known plant pathogens and what it revealed regarding effector proteins and their role in helping the pathogen jump from one plant species to another.

Understanding how plant pathogens jump from one plant to another can help prevent severe outbreaks such as the famous potato famine in Ireland back in the 19th century. Scientists suspect it as to do with evolutionary developments in effector proteins—those proteins produced by a pathogen that disable pathogen fighting proteins in the host. In this new effort, the researchers looked at two particular types of pathogens, Phytophthora infestans and Phytophthora mirabilis—they are believed to have diverged from a single parent approximately 1,200 years ago—recently enough to have left behind evidence of what caused them to go their separate ways.

P. infestans is the pathogen responsible for the potato famine. P. mirabilis on the other hand, is only able to infect a plant known as the four o'clock flower. To uncover what made the divergence possible, the researchers picked up where another team had left off back in 2010—that team had found evidence of adaptive evolution in 82 effector genes—those responsible for the creation of effector proteins. The new team looked at just one of those genes and found that the proteins that were produced by each plant—protease inhibitors—bound more strongly to proteases from their host plants than to those of the other host plant, suggesting a genetic predisposition. That explained their ability to infect one host but not another.

In taking a closer look at the effector proteins, the researchers found just one single amino acid difference in the two pathogens. Thus it appears that the divergence of the two pathogens came down to a simple evolutionary development in a single amino acid. More striking perhaps was the realization that such a small difference between pathogens can mean the difference between which types of plants can be infected—jumping to another plant generally renders the pathogen unable to infect its original host.

© 2014 Phys.org