Premium
Strategies in pathogenesis: mechanistic specificity in the detection of generic signals
Author(s) -
Duban M. Eugene,
Lee Kyunghee,
Lynn David G.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
molecular microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.857
H-Index - 247
eISSN - 1365-2958
pISSN - 0950-382X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2958.1993.tb01155.x
Subject(s) - biology , agrobacterium tumefaciens , receptor , agrobacterium , virulence , transformation (genetics) , gene , microbiology and biotechnology , ligand (biochemistry) , arabidopsis , cell division , response regulator , genetics , cell , computational biology , mutant
Summary The virulence genes of the plant pathogen Agrobacterium tumefaciens are induced by more than 40 low‐molecular‐weight phenolic compounds. The prevailing opinion is that (i) wound‐derived phenols produced on breach of the integrity of the cell wall act as the initiating signal in a series of events which results in host cell transformation, and (ii) a classical membrane receptor, putatively VirA, is responsible for the recognition of all such phenolic inducers. Here, we argue that the discovery of the subset of inducers that are relatives of the dehydrodiconiferyl alcohol glucoside (DCG) growth factors redirects our attention to work on the plant wound as a site of cell division, and suggests that we further explore the implications of early work on the relationship between transformation efficiency and the status of the cell cycle of the host. In addition, we argue that the significant structural diversity allowed in the para position of the phenol ring of inducers suggests that a receptor–ligand interaction based solely on structural recognition is insufficient, but that recognition followed by a specific proton transfer event may be sufficient to explain vir induction activity. Hence, the specificity of the response of A. tumefaciens may be a consequence of the features required for a chemical reaction to occur on the receptor surface. Finally, we review affinity labelling studies which exploit this phenol detection mechanism and which provide evidence that the phenol receptor may be other than VirA, the sensory kinase of the two component regulatory system implicated in Agrobacterium virulence. Taken together, these hypotheses form a model which has predictive and therefore experimental value, and which may be of broader interest in that it calls attention to the possibility of an intricate co‐evolution of signalling pathways of host and pathogen.