Figure 1. sX13 contributes to bacterial growth in culture and virulence.
Growth of Xcv wild type 85-10 (wt), the sX13 deletion mutant (ΔsX13) and ΔsX13 containing chromosomally re-integrated sX13 (ΔsX13+sX13 ch) in (A) complex medium NYG and (B) minimal medium MMA, respectively. Error bars represent standard deviations. Asterisks indicate statistically significant differences compared to wt (t-test; P<0.05). (C) Growth of Xcv 85-10 (wt) and ΔsX13 in leaves of susceptible ECW pepper plants. Data points represent the mean of three different samples from three different plants of one experiment. Standard deviations are indicated by error bars. (D) Plant infection assay. Xcv strains 85-10 (wt) and ΔsX13 carrying the empty vector (pB) or the sX13 expression construct (psX13) and strains additionally expressing HrpG* (phrpG*) were inoculated at a density of 4×108 (left panel) and 108 cfu/ml (right panel), respectively, into leaves of susceptible ECW and resistant ECW-10R pepper plants. Disease symptoms in ECW were photographed 9 days post inoculation (dpi). The HR was visualized by ethanol bleaching of the leaves 3 dpi (left panel) and 18 hours post inoculation (right panel), respectively. Dashed lines indicate the inoculated areas. All experiments were performed at least three times with similar results.