Plant hairy roots enable high throughput identification of antimicrobials against Candidatus Liberibacter spp.

ABSTRACT: A major bottleneck in identifying therapies to control citrus greening and other devastating plant diseases caused by fastidious pathogens is our inability to culture the pathogens in defined media or axenic cultures. As such, conventional approaches for antimicrobial evaluation (genetic or chemical) rely on time-consuming, low-throughput and inherently variable whole-plant assays. Here, we report that plant hairy roots support the growth of fastidious pathogens like Candidatus Liberibacter spp., the presumptive causal agents of citrus greening, potato zebra chip and tomato vein greening diseases. Importantly, we leverage the microbial hairy roots for rapid, reproducible efficacy screening of multiple therapies. We identify six antimicrobial peptides, two plant immune regulators and eight

SUBMITTER: Irigoyen S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7669877 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature