Pantoea stewartii subsp. stewartii is a bacterial phytopathogen that causes Stewart's wilt disease in corn. It uses quorum sensing to regulate expression of some genes involved in virulence in a cell density-dependent manner as the bacterial population grows from small numbers at the initial infection site in the leaf apoplast to high cell numbers in the xylem where it forms a biofilm. There ar...

Bacterial AvrE-family Type-III effector proteins (T3Es) contribute significantly to the virulence of plant-pathogenic species of Pseudomonas, Pantoea, Ralstonia, Erwinia, Dickeya and Pectobacterium, with hosts ranging from monocots to dicots. However, the mode of action of AvrE-family T3Es remains enigmatic, due in large part to their toxicity when expressed in plant or yeast cells. To search f...

Pantoea stewartii strain M073a is a Gram-negative bacterium isolated from a tropical waterfall. This strain exhibits quorum-sensing activity. Here, the assembly and annotation of its genome are presented.

During quorum sensing in the plant pathogen Pantoea stewartii subsp. stewartii, EsaI, an acyl-homoserine lactone (AHL) synthase, and the transcription factor EsaR coordinately control capsular polysaccharide production. The capsule is expressed only at high cell density when AHL levels are high, leading to inactivation of EsaR. In lieu of detailed structural information, the precise mechanism w...