Genetics. Published Articles Ahead of Print: June 8, 2005, Copyright © 2005
doi:10.1534/genetics.104.039339


A more recent version of this article appeared on September 1, 2005.


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Natural variation in the Pto pathogen resistance gene within species of wild tomato (Lycopersicon): I. Functional Analysis of Pto alleles

1 University of Munich
2 University of California, Davis

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: rose{at}zi.biologie.uni-muenchen.de.

Submitted on December 3, 2004
Revised on January 10, 2005
Accepted on 26 April 2005


Abstract

Disease resistance to the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv tomato (Pst) in the cultivated tomato, Lycopersicon esculentum, and the closely related L. pimpinellifolium is triggered by the physical interaction between plant disease resistance protein, Pto, and the pathogen avirulence protein, AvrPto. To investigate the extent to which variation in the Pto gene is responsible for naturally occurring variation in resistance to Pst, we determined the resistance phenotype of 51 accessions from seven species of Lycopersicon to isogenic strains of Pst differing in the presence of avrPto. One third of the plants displayed resistance specifically when the pathogen expressed AvrPto, consistent with a gene-for-gene interaction. To test whether this resistance in these species was conferred specifically by the Pto gene, alleles of Pto were amplified and sequenced from 49 individuals and a subset (16) of these alleles was tested in planta using Agrobacterium-mediated transient assays. Eleven alleles conferred a hypersensitive resistance response (HR) in the presence of AvrPto, while five did not. Ten amino acid substitutions associated with the absence of AvrPto recognition and HR were identified, none of which had been identified in previous structure-function studies. Additionally, three alleles encoding putative pseudogenes of Pto were isolated from two species of Lycopersicon. Therefore, a large proportion, but not all of the natural variation in the reaction to strains of Pst expressing AvrPto can be attributed to sequence variation in the Pto gene.

Key Words: Pto, coevolution, pathogen resistance, tomato




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