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Pectobacterium carotovorum subsp. actinidiae is the causal agent of summer canker in kiwifruit plants in South Korea. We report here the draft genome sequences of two P. carotovorum subsp. actinidiae strains, ICMP 19971 and ICMP 19972, which were originally isolated from Actinidia chinensis with symptoms of summer canker. These genome sequences will aid in the identification of genetic traits a...

The majority of bacterial genome annotations are currently automated and based on a 'gene by gene' approach. Regulatory signals and operon structures are rarely taken into account which often results in incomplete and even incorrect gene function assignments. Here we present SigmoID, a cross-platform (OS X, Linux and Windows) open-source application aiming at simplifying the identification of t...

The virulence of numerous Gram-negative bacteria is under the control of a quorum sensing process based on synthesis and perception of N-acyl homoserine lactones. Rhodococcus erythropolis, a Gram-positive bacterium, has recently been proposed as a biocontrol agent for plant protection against soft-rot bacteria, including Pectobacterium. Here, we show that the γ-lactone catabolic pathway of R. e...

Soft rot Enterobacteria in the genera Pectobacterium and Dickeya cause rotting of many crop plants. A new Dickeya isolate has been suggested to form a separate species, given the name Dickeya solani. This bacterium is spreading fast and replacing the closely related, but less virulent, potato pathogens. The genome of D. solani isolate D s0432-1 shows highest similarity at the nucleotide level a...

Development of protection tools targeting Dickeya species is an important issue in the potato production. Here, we present the identification and the characterization of novel biocontrol agents. Successive screenings of 10,000 bacterial isolates led us to retain 58 strains that exhibited growth inhibition properties against several Dickeya sp. and/or Pectobacterium sp. pathogens. Most of them b...

Phenazines are versatile secondary metabolites of bacterial origin that function in biological control of plant pathogens and contribute to the ecological fitness and pathogenicity of the producing strains. In this study, we employed a collection of 94 strains having various geographic, environmental, and clinical origins to study the distribution and evolution of phenazine genes in members of ...

Members of the genus Erwinia are primarily plant-pathogenic and plant-associated bacteria. As modern approaches have focused on the direct analysis of genes and their gene products, commonly associated phenotypes such as the type of disease that they cause and the relatedness of rDNA have prompted splitting of certain Erwinia members into the genus Enterobacter, Pectobacterium, Pantoea or Brenn...