ABOVE: GIMMIE: A pathogenic bacteria that steals Allium triquetrum’s iron may be key to controlling the invasive weed.
FLICKR, A.POULOS (IYA)
The paper
R. Grinter et al., “FusC, a member of the M16 protease family acquired by bacteria for iron piracy against plants,” PLOS Biol, 16:e2006026, 2018.
In Australia, the pathogenic bacterium Pectobacterium carotovorum decimates the invasive angled onion (Allium triquetrum, also known as the three-cornered leek or onion weed), by causing the plant to rot. One of the bacterium’s strengths is its ability to sap the plant’s iron reserves, but exactly how it does this has been a mystery. The answer could hold the key to using the bacterial species, and others like it, to control noxious weeds.
After sequencing the genome of the Australian strain of P. carotovorum, Trevor Lithgow, a microbiologist at Monash University in Melbourne, and his colleagues isolated FusC, a gene that encodes an enzyme that seems ...
