Specific and Sensitive Primers Developed by Comparative Genomics to Detect Bacterial Pathogens in Grains.

Accurate and rapid detection of bacterial plant pathogen is the first step toward disease management and prevention of pathogen spread. Bacterial plant pathogens Clavibacter michiganensis subsp. nebraskensis (Cmn), Pantoea stewartii subsp. stewartii (Pss), and Rathayibacter tritici (Rt) cause Goss's bacterial wilt and blight of maize, Stewart's wilt of maize and spike blight of wheat and barley, respectively. The bacterial diseases are not globally distributed and not present in Korea. This study adopted comparative genomics approach and aimed to develop specific primer pairs to detect these three bacterial pathogens. Genome comparison among target pathogens and their closely related bacterial species generated 15-20 candidate primer pairs per bacterial pathogen. The primer pairs were assessed by a conventional PCR for specificity against 33 species of Clavibacter, Pantoea, Rathayibacter, Pectobacterium, Curtobacterium. The investigation for specificity and sensitivity of the primer pairs allowed final selection of one or two primer pairs per bacterial pathogens. In our assay condition, a detection limit of Pss and Cmn was 2 pg/µl of genomic DNA per PCR reaction, while the detection limit for Rt primers was higher. The selected primers could also detect bacterial cells up to 8.8 × 103 cfu to 7.84 × 104 cfu per gram of grain seeds artificially infected with corresponding bacterial pathogens. The primer pairs and PCR assay developed in this study provide an accurate and rapid detection method for three bacterial pathogens of grains, which can be used to investigate bacteria contamination in grain seeds and to ultimately prevent pathogen dissemination over countries.

Triclosan Resistome from Metagenome Reveals Diverse Enoyl Acyl Carrier Protein Reductases and Selective Enrichment of Triclosan Resistance Genes.

Triclosan (TCS) is a widely used antimicrobial agent and TCS resistance is considered to have evolved in diverse organisms with extensive use of TCS, but distribution of TCS resistance has not been well characterized. Functional screening of the soil metagenome in this study has revealed that a variety of target enoyl acyl carrier protein reductases (ENR) homologues are responsible for the majority of TCS resistance. Diverse ENRs similar to 7-α-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (7-α-HSDH), FabG, or the unusual YX7K-type ENR conferred extreme tolerance to TCS. The TCS-refractory 7-α HSDH-like ENR and the TCS-resistant YX7K-type ENR seem to be prevalent in human pathogenic bacteria, suggesting that a selective enrichment occurred in pathogenic bacteria in soil. Additionally, resistance to multiple antibiotics was found to be mediated by antibiotic resistance genes that co-localize with TCS resistance determinants. Further comparative analysis of ENRs from 13 different environments has revealed a huge diversity of both prototypic and metagenomic TCS-resistant ENRs, in addition to a selective enrichment of TCS-resistant specific ENRs in presumably TCS-contaminated environments with reduced ENR diversity. Our results suggest that long-term extensive use of TCS can lead to the selective emergence of TCS-resistant bacterial pathogens, possibly with additional resistance to multiple antibiotics, in natural environments.