Dr Sophie Clough sophie.clough@durham.ac.uk
Researcher
Plant pathogenic bacterium Ralstonia solanacearum can rapidly evolve tolerance to antimicrobials produced by Pseudomonas biocontrol bacteria.
Clough, Sophie E; Elphinstone, John G; Friman, Ville-Perti
Authors
John G Elphinstone
Ville-Perti Friman
Abstract
Soil-borne plant pathogens significantly threaten crop production due to lack of effective control methods. One alternative to traditional agrochemicals is microbial biocontrol, where pathogen growth is suppressed by naturally occurring bacteria that produce antimicrobial chemicals. However, it is still unclear if pathogenic bacteria can evolve tolerance to biocontrol antimicrobials and if this could constrain the long-term efficacy of biocontrol strategies. Here we used an in vitro experimental evolution approach to investigate if the phytopathogenic Ralstonia solanacearum bacterium, which causes bacterial wilt disease, can evolve tolerance to antimicrobials produced by Pseudomonas bacteria. We further asked if tolerance was specific to pairs of R. solanacearum and Pseudomonas strains and certain antimicrobial compounds produced by Pseudomonas. We found that while all R. solanacearum strains could initially be inhibited by Pseudomonas strains, this inhibition decreased following successive subculturing with or without Pseudomonas supernatants. Using separate tolerance assays, we show that the majority of R. solanacearum strains evolved increased tolerance to multiple Pseudomonas strains. Mechanistically, evolved tolerance was most likely linked to reduced susceptibility to orfamide lipopeptide antimicrobials secreted by Pseudomonas strains in our experimental conditions. Some levels of tolerance also evolved in the control treatments, which was likely correlated response due to adaptations to the culture media. Together, these results suggest that plant-pathogenic bacteria can rapidly evolve increased tolerance to bacterial antimicrobial compounds, which could reduce the long-term efficacy of microbial biocontrol.
Citation
Clough, S. E., Elphinstone, J. G., & Friman, V.-P. (2024). Plant pathogenic bacterium Ralstonia solanacearum can rapidly evolve tolerance to antimicrobials produced by Pseudomonas biocontrol bacteria. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 37(2), 225–237. https://doi.org/10.1093/jeb/voae002
| Journal Article Type | Article |
|---|---|
| Acceptance Date | Jan 4, 2024 |
| Online Publication Date | Jan 6, 2024 |
| Publication Date | 2024-02 |
| Deposit Date | Mar 19, 2024 |
| Publicly Available Date | Mar 19, 2024 |
| Journal | Journal of evolutionary biology |
| Print ISSN | 1010-061X |
| Electronic ISSN | 1420-9101 |
| Publisher | Wiley |
| Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 225–237 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1093/jeb/voae002 |
| Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2258073 |
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Copyright Statement
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.