Environmental Pathology

A latest programmed of study within the Plant Pathology programmed endeavors to use proportional genomics to recognize genes and investigate mechanisms concerned in the persistence of enterobacterial plant and animal pathogens in the environment. There are now a lot of bacterial genomes fully sequenced, and comparative genomics tools developed at SCRI are being used to examine the relationships between these genomes. One important new advance has been our capability to evaluate the genome of the enterobacterial plant pathogen Pectobacterium atrosepticum (Pba) with other plant-associated bacteria, and enterobacterial animal pathogens such as E. coli and Salmonella spp. Such judgments have led to the detection of many unexpected traits in Pba, such as the existence of genes implicated in nitrogen fixation and root binding, which suggest that this pathogen may live in the environment for prolonged era even in the absence of its disease host potato. Our comparisons have also evidently identified genomic islands in the enterobacterial human pathogens with resemblance to genes in Pba and other plant-connected bacteria.