Date of Defense

2008

Department

Biological Sciences

Abstract

Bacterial infection is one of the many causes of plant diseases seen in the world today. An example of this is Pseudomonas syringae pathovar tomato DC300 causing bacteria speck in tomatoes. Many gram negative phytopathogenic bacteria, including Pseudomonas syringae, make use of the Type III Secretion System in order to infect the host plant cells. This bacterium uses a Hrp pilus in order to inject its virulence factors into the plant cell cytoplasm. Hrp outer proteins, or Hops, are one of the virulence factors which are injected into the host cell and interfere with plant defense signal transduction in many ways. In this research study, HopM1 will be studied in order to establish an effector model system using a hop which is lethal in our model, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Serial dilution replica plating and a titer assay are two procedures which will help to determine if HopM1 is lethal on solid and liquid media. HopM1 will be compared to the cotransformant control made up of pJG484 and pJG485. By identifying a lethal Hop and establishing a model system where this Hop can be expressed in yeast, it will make it much easier to identify cellular targets of many bacteria that use the same TTSS mode of infection.

Access Setting

Honors Thesis-Campus Only

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