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Poster

Session: Session 1 Presenting Authors at Posters (Evens)

P-158 - Effects of genes associated with motility on biofilm formation and tomato root colonization of plant-beneficial bacterium Pseudomonas kribbensis XP1-6

Tuesday, July 15, 2025
09:55 - 11:30  
Location: Confex Hall 3
Microbial infection strategies (pathogens & non-pathogens)

    Presenting Author(s)

  • NL

    Nai-Chun Lin

    Professor
    National Taiwan University
    Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan (Republic of China)

    • Author(s)

  • JL

    Jia-Rong Liu

    National Taiwan University
    Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan (Republic of China)

  • TP

    Tien Pao

    National Taiwan University
    Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan (Republic of China)

Pseudomonas kribbensis XP1-6 is a plant-beneficial bacterium that can promote growth and thermotolerance in tomato. Although P. kribbensis XP1-6 is advantageous to tomato, the mechanism underlying the interactions between P. kribbensis XP1-6 and its host remains poorly understood. Here, we identified eleven candidate genes associated with motility by screening a transposon mutant library followed by insertion site determination. In-frame deletion mutants of the candidate genes and fliC, the gene coding for flagellin, were generated for further study. The results exhibited that DaceE and DtolB dramatically decreased motility and produced fragile or tumbling flagella. DfliC, DaceE, and DtolB also altered their chemotaxis activity and produced lower amounts of biofilm and extracellular polysaccharide (EPS) than the wild type. While P. kribbensis XP1-6 is attracted to citric acid and fructose, the chemotactic response to citric acid was decreased for DfliC, DaceE, and DtolB. Finally, lower tomato root colonization efficiency was observed for DfliC, DaceE and DtolB, indicating that genes associated with motility can affect the colonization efficiency of P. kribbensis XP1-6. Although how aceE and tolB affect motility remains to be investigated, these results shed light on the molecular mechanisms of tomato root colonization by P. kribbensis XP1-6.