Identification of a host range determinant from Ralstonia solancearum race 3

Ralstonia solancearum infects many solanaceous plants, however race 3 infects only potato and tomato weakly. To identify genes responsible for race specificity of R. solanacearum, we mobilized genomic library of LSD2029 (race 3) into LSD341 (race 1) and inoculated 1,000 transconjugants into hot pepper. One transconjugant that did not induce wilt symptom in hot pepper was isolated. We found that a cosmid clone, pRSl, conferred avirulence to LSD341. By deletion and mutational analyses of pRSl, we found the 0.9-kb PstI/Hindlll fragment carries avirulence functions. We sequenced the fragment and identified one possible open reading frame, a rsal gene, possibly encoding 110 amino acids. The rsal was preceded with a plant-inducible promoter (PIP) box, indicating that the gene might be regulated by HrpB. Interestingly, the promoter region of the rsal homolog in the strain GM11000 (race 1) did not have the PIP box. Rsal did not show any significant homologies with proteins in the database, indicating th e protein is different from the previously reported avirulence proteins. When we mutated the rsal gene by marker-exchange in LSD2029, the mutant was less virulent in potato.