We describe the genetic organization of a copper-resistant plasmid containing copG and cusCBA genes in the plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae. Chromosomal variants of czcCBA and a plasmid variant of cusCBA were present in different P. syringae pathovar strains. Transformation of the copper-sensitive Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae FF5 strain with copG or cusCBA conferred copper resistance, and quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) experiments confirmed their induction by copper.
Pseudomonas syringae is a common foliar bacterium and causal agent of plant diseases in many different hosts worldwide, affecting both woody trees and herbaceous plants (1).Copper bactericides have been widely used for decades to control bacterial infections in crop plants (2). However, the extensive use of copper bactericides can lead to many problems, among them the reduction of efficacy of this antimicrobial agent due to the selection of copper-resistant (Cu r ) strains (3, 4). Copper resistance determinants have been detected and described in several pathovars of P. syringae (3, 5-7) and are frequently encoded within native plasmids (3,8,9). These native Cu r plasmids contribute to the dissemination of resistance genes among P. syringae strains from different pathovars (5, 10, 11). The copABCD genes, which were first described in a plasmid of P. syringae pv. tomato PT23 (8), is an important determinant of copper resistance in P. syringae and other phytopathogenic bacteria (6,8,9,(12)(13)(14). However, additional studies have shown that P. syringae may harbor other variants of Cu r determinants (3, 7, 15). The efflux system czcCBA and the analogous system cusCBA are probably the best-characterized members of the heavy metal efflux (HME)-RND (resistance-nodulation-cell division) family. The czcCBA system functions in the detoxification of cadmiun, zinc, and cobalt (16,17), and the cusCBA system works in detoxifying monovalent cations, such as silver and copper (16,18). These efflux systems have been widely studied in Cupriavidus metallidurans (formerly Ralstonia metallidurans or Alcaligenes eutrophus) (16,(19)(20)(21)(22), Escherichia coli (18, 23), and Pseudomonas putida KT2440 (24-26), but no further studies have been carried out for the plant pathogen P. syringae pv. syringae.In this work, we detected that the majority of the cusCBA genes from different Pseudomonas species could be wrongly annotated as czcCBA genes, based on the analysis of the conserved motifs of the RND transporter domains (27). This inaccurate annotation creates problems in the database regarding czcCBA or cusCBA genes in the Pseudomonas genus.Our goal was to identify and characterize plasmid-encoded Cu r genes in the P. syringae pv. syringae UMAF0081 strain. The bacterial strains used, and sizes of native plasmids harbored by the strains, are listed in Table 1. Each native plasmid examined is a member of the pPT23A plasmid family, a group of related plasmids broadly distributed within P. syringae and the related phytopathogen Pseudomonas savastanoi (32). These...