Publications

4731

ABSTRACT Phytoplasmas are unculturable plant-pathogenic bacteria causing devastating damage to agricultural production worldwide. Here, we report the draft genome sequence of “ Candidatus Phytoplasma asteris” strain OY-V. Most of the known virulence factors and host-interacting proteins were conserved in OY-V. This genome furthers our understanding of genetic diversity and pathogenicity of phytoplasmas.

ABSTRACT We report here the draft genome sequence of “ Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus” strain HHCA, collected from a lemon tree in California. The HHCA strain has a genome size of 1,150,620 bp, 36.5% G+C content, 1,119 predicted open reading frames, and 51 RNA genes.

A set of experiments was carried out to characterize how temperature affects the spread of chrysanthemum yellows phytoplasma (CYP), a strain of Candidatus Phytoplasma asteris, in Chrysanthemum carinatum plants transmitted by the Macrosteles quadripunctulatus leafhopper. Experiments provided data on CYP latency period in insect and plant host, M. quadripunctulatus adult mortality rate, and epidemics progression in plants under controlled conditions inside climatic chambers. Experiments were conducted at temperatures ranging between 15 and 30°C. Empirical laws for temperature-dependent epidemiological parameters were next derived and used in a dynamical model of the epidemics progression. Experiments showed that CYP epidemics was faster at higher temperatures and the model could replicate these observations with relatively high accuracy (correlation >98.03% and residuals <14.5%). The epidemics spreading rate increased linearly from 0.2 plants infected per day at 15°C to about 0.7 plants per day at 30°C, possibly due to: i) faster CYP multiplication in the host plants and ii) higher frequency of feeding bouts of M. quadripunctulatus at higher temperatures.