Five transcription units of the Pseudomonas solanacearum hrp gene cluster are required for the secretion of the HR-inducing PopA1 protein. The nucleotide sequences of two of these, units 1 and 3, have been reported. Here, we present the nucleotide sequence of the three other transcription units, units 2, 4 and 7, which are together predicted to code for 15 hrp genes. This brings the total number of Hrp proteins encoded by these five transcription units to 20, including HrpB, the positive regulatory protein, and HpaP, which is apparently not required for plant interactions. Among the 18 other proteins, eight belong to protein families regrouping proteins involved in type III secretion pathways in animal and plant bacterial pathogens and in flagellum biogenesis, while two are related solely to proteins involved in secretion systems. For the various proteins found to be related to P. solanacearum Hrp proteins, those in plant-pathogenic bacteria include proteins encoded by hrp genes. For Hrp-related proteins of animal pathogens, those encoded by the spa and mxi genes of Shigella flexneri and of Salmonella typhimurium and by the ysc genes of Yersinia are involved in type III secretion pathways. Proteins involved in flagellum biogenesis, which are related to Hrp proteins of P. solancearum, include proteins encoded by fli and flh genes of S. typhimurium, Bacillus subtilis and Escherichia coli and by mop genes of Erwinia carotovora. P. solanacearum Hrp proteins were also found to be related to proteins of Rhizobium fredii involved in nodulation specificity.

The hrp gene cluster of Pseudomonas solanacearum GMI1000 strain encodes functions that are essential for pathogenicity on tomato and for the elicitation of the hypersensitive response on tobacco. In this study, we present the nucleotide sequence of one of the hrp genes (hrpB) located at the left-hand end of the cluster and we show that hrpB encodes a positive regulator controlling the expression of hrp genes. hrpB has a coding capacity for a 477-amino-acid polypeptide, which shows significant similarity to several prokaryotic transcriptional activators including the AraC protein of Escherichia coli, the XylS protein of Pseudomonas putida and the VirF protein of Yersinia enterocolitica. The predicted hrpB gene product belongs to a family of bacterial regulators different from the previously described HrpS protein of the hrp gene cluster of Pseudomonas syringae pv. phaseolicola. Genetic evidence demonstrates that the hrpB gene product acts as a positive regulator of the expression in minimal medium of all but one of the putative transcription units of the hrp gene cluster and also controls the expression of genes located outside this cluster. We also show in this paper that the transcription of hrpB is induced in minimal medium and is partly autoregulated.

A pLAFR3 cosmid clone designated pVir2 containing a 25-kilobase (kb) DNA insert was isolated from a wild-type Pseudomonas solanacearum GMI1000 genomic library. This cosmid was shown to complement all but one of the nine TnS-induced mutants which have been isolated after random mutagenesis and which have lost both pathogenicity toward tomato and ability to induce hypersensitive reaction (HR) on tobacco (hrp mutants). The insert is colinear with the genome and provides restoration of the HR-inducing ability when transferred into several TnS-induced hrp mutants, but failed to complement deletion mutants extending on both sides of the pVir2 region. Localized mutagenesis demonstrated that the hrp genes are clustered within a 17.5-kb region of pVir2 and that this cluster probably extends on the genomic region adjacent to the pVir2 insert. A 3-kb region adjacent to the hip cluster modulates aggressiveness toward tomato but does not control HR-inducing ability. Sequences within the hip cluster of pVir2 have homology with the genomic DNA of Xanthomonas campestris strains representing eight different pathovars, suggesting that a set of common pathogenicity functions could be shared by P. solanacearum and X. campestris.