How plants become zombies

11-Apr-2014 - Netherlands

Scientists of John Innes Centre and Wageningen UR have shown how a specific bacterial parasite, causing developmental problems in crops, e.g. oilseed rape, is able to manipulate plants in such a way that they produce leaves instead of flowers. This manipulation improves the chances of the bacteria being spread to other plants, by leafhoppers feeding on those plants. The scientists were able to identify the plant proteins that the bacteria target to direct the plant into a leaf-producing organism without flowers. The plant turns into a zombie: dead to the future and destined to benefit only the survival of the bacteria.

Forget popular video game Plants Vs. Zombies, some plants are zombies and scientists have uncovered how bacterial parasites turn them into the living dead. “For the first time, we can reveal how this remarkable manipulation takes place,” says Prof. Hogenhout from the John Innes Centre. “In that sense, the plant world is ahead of animal biology - where manipulations also take place but no mechanisms have been uncovered to show how.” For example, the parasitic lancet liver fluke infects the brain of ants, compelling them to climb to the tip of a blade of grass and into the mouth of a grazing animal. This is not far from the brain-eating zombies of the video game. Another parasite is thought to change the behaviour of rats to make them more susceptible to predation.

“We know these parasites are puppet masters but the strings they are pulling have yet to be identified,” says Prof. Hogenhout. The plant parasite in her study is dependent on both insects to spread and plants on which to grow. It induces the plant to transform its flowers into leaf tissue, sacrificing its reproductive success and becoming sterile. It is now a zombie plant – dead to the future and destined to benefit only the survival of the bacteria. Scientists in the lab of Prof. Hogenhout at JIC, and in the lab of Prof. Angenent and Prof. Immink at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, have discovered that the parasitic bacterium produces a protein called SAP54 that is essential to this process. The protein is dependent for its activity on another family of proteins called RAD23. These specialised bacteria affect a broad range of plants, turning flowers green, transforming them into leaf tissue or producing a profusion of stems as in Witches Broom. They cause this disease in crops including grapes, coconuts and oilseed rape.

When leafhoppers eat infected plant material, the bacteria colonize the insects, including their salivary glands. If the insect dribbles saliva as it sucks on another plant, the bacteria are able to spread into new plant tissue. The bacteria set to work on making the plant more attractive to leafhoppers. Via the SAP54 and RAD23 proteins, the plant is coerced into transforming its flowers into leaf-like material and becomes more attractive to leafhoppers for colonization. The leafhoppers pick up the bacteria from infected plants while feeding and then can spread the bacterial pathogen to yet more plants. “This parasite is incapable of surviving without its insect and plant hosts and we can reveal for the first time how it is able to manipulate them both,” says Prof. Hogenhout. “It is fascinating to consider that this bacterium is able to manipulate the way plants grow and the way insects behave to suit its own needs,” says JIC’s Dr. MacLean, first author on the study to be published in PLOS Biology. The Hogenhout lab has also helped with the first insights into how a fungal parasite is able to create pseudoflowers mimicking buttercups. Creating these flowers in a relative of broccoli from the mustard family helps attract insects that spread the spores of the fungus.

https://www.bionity.com/en/news/147822/how-plants-become-zombies.html