Not Just a Pathogen? Description of a Plant-Beneficial Strain.

Plants develop in a microbe-rich environment and must interact with a plethora of microorganisms, both pathogenic and beneficial. Indeed, such is the case of , and its model organisms and , a bacterial genus that has received particular attention because of its beneficial effect on plants and its pathogenic strains. The present study aims to compare plant-beneficial and pathogenic strains belonging to the species to get new insights into the distinction between the two types of plant-microbe interactions. In assays carried out under greenhouse conditions, pv. strain 260-02 was shown to promote plant-growth and to exert biocontrol of pv. strain DC3000, against the fungus and the . This strain also had a distinct volatile emission profile, as well as a different plant-colonization pattern, visualized by confocal microscopy and labeled strains, compared to strain DC3000. Despite the different behavior, the strain 260-02 showed great similarity to pathogenic strains at a genomic level. However, genome analyses highlighted a few differences that form the basis for the following hypotheses regarding strain 260-02. strain 260-02: (i) possesses non-functional virulence genes, like the mangotoxin-producing operon ; (ii) has different regulation pathways, suggested by the difference in the autoinducer system and the lack of a virulence activator gene; (iii) has genes encoding DNA methylases different from those found in other strains, suggested by the presence of horizontal-gene-transfer-obtained methylases that could affect gene expression.