article · Viruses
Phage therapy offers an environmentally friendly method for controlling plant diseases caused by bacteria, but natural resistance poses a major hurdle to its adoption. Bacterial leaf blight, caused by Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae, devastates rice crops. Investigation of a spontaneous bacterial mutant displaying resistance to the lytic phage X2 revealed a specific frameshift mutation in the CDS2289 gene, which encodes a glycosyltransferase. This genetic alteration changes bacterial surface morphology and alters lipopolysaccharide production and structure, successfully blocking phage adsorption. However, acquiring this resistance comes at a fitness cost. Both the spontaneous mutant and an insertional mutant with impaired glycosyltransferase function exhibited reduced virulence. These findings demonstrate how bacterial surface modifications drive phage resistance while simultaneously diminishing pathogenicity, providing important biological context on host-pathogen interactions.
Bacterial leaf blight severely threatens rice production worldwide. While using bacteriophages offers a green alternative to chemical pesticides, bacteria frequently adapt to resist them. Understanding that resistant strains become less virulent helps researchers design sustainable biocontrol strategies that exploit these biological trade-offs, making it harder for pathogens to evade treatments without weakening themselves.
This early-stage research provides insights for agricultural biotechnology developers formulating bacteriophage-based biocontrol treatments for rice crops. Demonstrating that phage resistance involves a fitness cost that reduces virulence could inform the design of more resilient biocontrol programmes. However, because the study is limited to laboratory-based genetic and mechanistic findings, direct agricultural applications remain at a preliminary stage.
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Phage therapy is a promising biocontrol management on plant diseases caused by bacterial pathogens due to its specificity, efficiency and environmental friendliness. The emergence of natural phage-resistant bacteria hinders the application of phage therapy. <i>Xanthomonas oryzae</i> pv. <i>oryzae</i> (Xoo) is the causal agent of the devastating bacterial leaf blight disease of rice. Here, we obtained a spontaneous mutant C2R of an Xoo strain C2 showing strong resistance to the lytic phage X2. Analysis of the C2R genome found that the CDS2289 gene encoding glycosyltransferase acquired a frameshift mutation at the 180th nucleotide site, which also leads to a premature stop mutation at the 142nd amino acid. This mutation confers the inhibition of phage adsorption through the changes in lipopolysaccharide production and structure and bacterial surface morphology. Interestingly, glycosyltransferase-deficient C2R and an insertional mutant k2289 also showed reduced virulence, suggesting the trade-off costs of phage resistance. In summary, this study highlights the role of glycosyltransferase in interactions among pathogenic bacteria, phages and plant hosts, which provide insights into balanced coevolution from environmental perspectives.
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DOI: 10.3390/v14051088
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