Contribution of the Regulatory Gene lemA to Field Fitness of Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae.

In Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae, lemA is required for brown spot lesion formation on snap bean and for production of syringomycin and extracellular proteases (E. M. Hrabak and D. K. Willis, J. Bacteriol. 174: 3011-3022, 1992; E. M. Hrabak and D. K. Willis, Mol. Plant-Microbe Interact. 6:368-375, 1993; D. K. Willis, E. M. Hrabak, J. J. Rich, T. M. Barta, S. E. Lindow, and N. J. Panopoulos, Mol. Plant-Microbe Interact. 3:149-156, 1990). The lemA mutant NPS3136 (lemA1::Tn5) was previously found to be indistinguishable from its pathogenic parent B728a in its ability to grow when infiltrated into bean leaves of plants maintained under controlled environmental conditions (Willis et al., Mol. Plant-Microbe Interact. 3:149-156, 1990). We compared population sizes of NPS3136 and B728aN (a Nal(supr) clone of wild-type B728a) in two field experiments to determine the effect of inactivation of lemA on the fitness of P. syringae pv. syringae. In one experiment, the bacterial strains were spray inoculated onto the foliage of 25-day-old bean plants. In the other, seeds were inoculated at the time of planting. In both experiments, the strains were inoculated individually and coinoculated in a 1:1 ratio. NPS3136 and B728aN achieved similar large population sizes on germinating seeds. However, in association with leaves, population sizes of NPS3136 were diminished relative to those of B728aN in both experiments. Thus, lemA contributed significantly to the fitness of P. syringae pv. syringae in association with bean leaves but not on germinating seeds under field conditions. When NPS3136 was coinoculated with B728aN, the mutant behaved as it did when inoculated alone. However, population sizes of B728aN in the coinoculation treatment were much lower than those when it was inoculated alone. Inactivation of the lemA gene appeared to have rendered the mutant suppressive to B728aN.