Abstract

The bacterial plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae injects a large repertoire of effector proteins into plant cells using a type III secretion apparatus. Effectors can trigger or suppress defences in a host-dependent fashion. Host defences are often accompanied by programmed cell death, while interference with defences is sometimes associated with cell death suppression. We previously predicted the effector repertoire of the sequenced bean pathogen P. syringae pv. syringae (Psy) B728a using bioinformatics. Here we show that PsyB728a is also pathogenic on the model plant species Nicotiana benthamiana (tobacco). We confirm our effector predictions and clone the nearly complete PsyB728a effector repertoire. We find effectors to have different cell death-modulating activities and distinct roles during the infection of the susceptible bean and tobacco hosts. Unexpectedly, we do not find a strict correlation between cell death-eliciting and defence-eliciting activity and between cell death-suppressing activity and defence-interfering activity. Furthermore, we find several effectors with quantitative avirulence activities on their susceptible hosts, but with growth-promoting effects on Arabidopsis thaliana, a species on which PsyB728a does not cause disease. We conclude that P. syringae strains may have evolved large effector repertoires to extend their host ranges or increase their survival on various unrelated plant species.