Sucrose is an important storage and transport sugar of plants and an energy source for many phytopathogenic bacteria. To analyze regulation and biochemistry of sucrose metabolism of the fire blight pathogen Erwinia amylovora, a chromosomal fragment which enabled Escherichia coli to utilize sucrose as sole carbon source was cloned. By transposon mutagenesis, the scr regulon of E. amylovora was tagged, and its nucleotide sequence was determined. Five open reading frames, with the genes scrK, scrY, scrA, scrB, and scrR, had high homology to genes of the scr regulons from Klebsiella pneumoniae and plasmid pUR400. scrB and scrR of E. amylovora were fused to a histidine tag and to the maltose-binding protein (MalE) of E. coli, respectively. ScrB (53 kDa) catalyzed the hydrolysis of sucrose with a K m of 125 mM. Binding of a MalE-ScrR fusion protein to an scrYAB promoter fragment was shown by gel mobility shifts. This complex dissociated in the presence of fructose but not after addition of sucrose. Expression of the scr regulon was studied with an scrYAB promotergreen fluorescent protein gene fusion and measured by flow cytometry and spectrofluorometry. The operon was affected by catabolite repression and induced by sucrose or fructose. The level of gene induction correlated to the sucrose concentration in plant tissue, as shown by flow cytometry. Sucrose mutants created by site-directed mutagenesis did not produce significant fire blight symptoms on apple seedlings, indicating the importance of sucrose metabolism for colonization of host plants by E. amylovora.The gram-negative bacterium Erwinia amylovora causes fire blight of apple, pear, and other rosaceous plants. Pathogenecity depends on the ability to produce the exopolysaccharide amylovoran (10, 13), to elicit a hypersensitive response on non-host plants (6,8), and to metabolize sorbitol of the host plants (1). Rosaceous plants contain sorbitol and sucrose as storage and transport carbohydrates. The distribution of these carbohydrates is dependent on environmental conditions, species, and plant tissue (28, 52). The highest concentration of sucrose was found in the nectaries of host plants (14), which are assumed to be the main entry site for the pathogen when the pathogen is distributed by insects.Sucrose is utilized by some but not all bacteria extracellularily or intracellularily. E. amylovora can metabolize sucrose via the secreted levansucrase, which polymerizes the homopolysaccharide levan and releases glucose from sucrose (27,29), but also by uptake and intracellular metabolism.The sucrose-utilizing system of enteric bacteria has been studied in Klebsiella pneumoniae and in some isolates of Escherichia coli and Salmonella spp. (45, 49). In E. coli and Salmonella spp., the conjugative plasmid pUR400 confers the ability to utilize sucrose (54), whereas the scr regulon of K. pneumoniae is located on the chromosome (42, 49). In these bacteria, the uptake of sucrose is mediated via the phosphoenolpyruvate-dependent carbohydrate:phosphotransferase system (PTS),...