Bacteria Genomes - LEIFSONIA XYLI

Leifsonia xyli subsp. xyli, is a Gram-positive bacterium which causes ratoon stunting disease and affects sugarcane worldwide. Ratoon stauntung disease is an insidious disease that impairs growth and destroys up to 15 percent of crops worldwide. The disease is hard to diagnose and farmers may not know their fields are infected. The bacteria can travel among fields on sugarcane knives and harvesting machines.

Analysis revealed 307 predicted pseudogenes, which is more than any bacterial plant pathogen sequenced to date. Many of these pseudogenes, if functional, would likely be involved in the degradation of plant heteropolysaccharides, uptake of free sugars, and synthesis of amino acids. Although L. xyli subsp. xyli has only been identified colonising the xylem vessels of sugarcane, the numbers of predicted regulatory genes and sugar transporters are similar to those in free-living organisms.

References:

Mol. Plant Microbe. Interact. 17 (8):827-36 (2004)
http://leifsonia.lbi.ic.unicamp.br/lx_menu.html
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/BODY_SC002