A Diazeniumdiolate Signal in Upregulates Virulence Factors and Promotes Survival in Plants.

infects a wide variety of crops. The () is conserved across many strains and is responsible for producing an extracellular chemical signal, leudiazen. Disruption of the gene in pv. () UMAF0158 alleviated tomato chlorosis caused by this bacterium. We showed that deletion of the entire reduced UMAF0158 population in tomato leaflets. Leudiazen restored the signaling activity of the deletion mutant at a concentration as low as 10 nM. Both the diazeniumdiolate and isobutyl groups of leudiazen are critical for this potent signaling activity. Transcriptional analysis showed that and leudiazen induce the expression of as well as an uncharacterized gene cluster, RS17235-RS17245. We found that this cluster enhances the survival of UMAF0158 in planta and is widely distributed in strains. Our results demonstrate that plays prominent roles in the virulence and growth of . The and -like signaling systems in different bacteria likely regulate diverse microbe-host interactions. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY 4.0 International license.