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Title: Practical benefits of knowing the enemy: Modern molecular tools for diagnosing the etiology of bacterial diseases and understanding the taxonomy and diversity of plant pathogenic bacteria

Author
item Bull, Carolee
item KOIKE, STEVE - University Of California - Cooperative Extension Service

Submitted to: Annual Review of Phytopathology
Publication Type: Review Article
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/28/2014
Publication Date: 5/18/2015
Citation: Bull, C.T., Koike, S. 2015. Practical benefits of knowing the enemy: Modern molecular tools for diagnosing the etiology of bacterial diseases and understanding the taxonomy and diversity of plant pathogenic bacteria. Annual Review of Phytopathology. doi: 10.1146/annurev-phyto-080614-120122.

Interpretive Summary: Bacterial diseases of food and fiber crops result in significant crop losses and result in higher prices or lack of product for consumers. The identification of bacterial pathogens from new and emerging plant diseases is the first step to develop methods to prevent and control the diseases. However, due to changes in the names and our understanding of the relationships among bacteria, identification is complicated for front line disease diagnosticians. This article describes the scientific tools that have the potential to make disease diagnosis and pathogen identification more accurate and rapid. The article explains how these tools can be used to understand pathogen populations and thus provide the information needed to develop sustainable disease management.

Technical Abstract: Knowing the identity of bacterial plant pathogens is essential to strategic and sustainable disease management. However, such identifications are linked to bacterial taxonomy, a complicated and changing discipline that depends on methods and information that often are not used by those who are diagnosing field problems. Modern molecular tools for fingerprinting and sequencing allow for pathogen identification in the absence of distinguishing or conveniently tested phenotypic characters. These methods should also be used to study the etiology, taxonomy, and epidemiology of phytopathogenic bacteria from natural epidemics. Whole genome sequence analysis now serves as the cornerstone of studies of microbial diversity and bacterial taxonomy. Whole genome sequence analysis needs to become adequately accessible, automated, and affordable in order to be used routinely for identification and epidemiology.