Citrus bacterial canker (CBC) disease occurs worldwide and incurs considerable costs both from control measures and yield losses. Bacteria that cause CBC require one of six known type III transcription activator-like (TAL) effector genes for the characteristic pustule formation at the site of infection. Here, we show that Xanthomonas citri subspecies citri strain Xcc306, with the type III TAL e...

Alpha-amino-acid ester hydrolases are multimeric enzymes of potential use in antibiotic production. Knowledge of their structure could help to engineer these enzymes into economically viable biocatalysts. The alpha-amino-acid ester hydrolases from Xanthomonas citri and Acetobacter turbidans have been crystallized. The X. citri enzyme crystallizes in a primitive monoclinic space group (unit-cell...

Background The history of the world citrus industry is marked by a series of diseases caused by different etiologic agents. Several of them are characterized as biotrophic pathogens like Xanthomonas citri subsp. citri, three Candidatus Liberibacter spp and Citrus leprosis virus C (CiLV-C). In plant-pathogen interactions, the role of salicylic acid (SA) in activating defense related genes is wel...

Common bacterial blight is a devastating seed-borne disease of common beans that also occurs on other legume species including lablab and Lima beans. We sequenced and analyzed the genomes of 26 strains of Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. phaseoli and X. fuscans subsp. fuscans, the causative agents of this disease, collected over four decades and six continents. This revealed considerable genetic vari...

A novel mapping method based on touchdown PCR was developed for identifying a transposon insertion site in genomic DNA using a hybrid consensus-degenerate primer in combination with a specific primer that anneals to the transposon. The method was tested using Xanthomonas citri transposon mutants. PCR products contained adjacent DNA regions that belonged to both X. citri genomic DNA and the tran...

The gram-negative plant-pathogenic bacterium Xanthomonas campestris pv. vesicatoria is the causative agent of bacterial spot disease in pepper and tomato plants, which leads to economically important yield losses. This pathosystem has become a well-established model for studying bacterial infection strategies. Here, we present the whole-genome sequence of the pepper-pathogenic Xanthomonas campe...