The latest issue of MicrobiologyOpen is now live. All 14 excellent articles are fully open access: free to read, download and share.
Below are two articles highlighted by the Editor-in-Chief, Pierre Cornelis:
Assessment of the relevance of the antibiotic 2-amino-3-(oxirane-2,3-dicarboxamido)-propanoyl-valine from Pantoea agglomerans biological control strains against bacterial plant pathogens by Ulrike F. Sammer, Katharina Reiher, Dieter Spiteller, Annette Wensing and Beate Völksch.
Summary: The epiphyte Pantoea agglomerans 48b/90 (Pa48b) is a promising biocontrol strain against economically important bacterial pathogens such as Erwinia amylovora. Strain Pa48b produces the broad-spectrum antibiotic 2-amino-3-(oxirane-2,3-dicarboxamido)-propanoyl-valine (APV) in a temperature-dependent manner. An APV-negative mutant still suppressed the E. amylovora population and fire blight disease symptoms in apple blossom experiments under greenhouse conditions, but was inferior to the Pa48b wild-type indicating the influence of APV in the antagonism. In plant experiments with the soybean pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. glycinea both, Pa48b and the APV-negative mutant, successfully suppressed the pathogen. Our results demonstrate that the P. agglomerans strain Pa48b is an efficient biocontrol organism against plant pathogens, and we prove its ability for fast colonization of plant surfaces over a wide temperature range.
A novel regulator RcdA of the csgD gene encoding the master regulator of biofilm formation in Escherichia coli by Tomohiro Shimada, Yasunori Katayama, Shuichi Kawakita, Hiroshi Ogasawara, Masahiro Nakano, Kaneyoshi Yamamoto and Akira Ishihama.
Summary: The FixJ/LuxR family transcription factor CsgD is a master regulator of biofilm formation in Escherichia coli. Previously, we identified more than 10 transcription factors that participate in regulation of the csgD promoter. After genomic SELEX screening of regulation targets, an uncharacterized TetR-type transcription factor YbjK was found to be involved in regulation of the csgD promoter. In addition, a number of stress-response genes were found to be under the direct control of YbjK. Taken together, we propose to rename it to RcdA (regulator of csgD). One unique feature of RcdA is its mode of DNA binding. Gel shift, DNase-I footprinting, and atomic force microscopic (AFM) analyses indicated that RcdA is a DNA-binding protein with a high level of cooperativity, with which it covers the entire surface of probe DNA through protein–protein interaction and moreover it induces the formation of aggregates of DNA–RcdA complexes.
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