A SURVEY OF CRISPR ACROSS PECTOBACTERIUM ATROSEPTICUM

Abstract

Pectobacterium atrosepticum is one of the plant pathogenic bacteria that has been observed to cause many agricultural losses including soft rot and blackleg in potato. The destructive impact of Pectobacterium atrosepticum is being spread all over the world and in need to identify effective control approach for it. Phage control has been stated as the sustainable measure comparing to other approaches. However, the phage control of bacteria is getting challenged as bacterial population are evolving with diverse CRISPR-cas immune system. The diverse defence mechanism of bacteria getting rapid resistance against phage attack over time. Hereby, it is important to know the diversity in CRISPR elements and its evolutionary history to get optimum phage control output. Current research analysed the CRISPR elements (spacers) in 207 Pectobacterium atrosepticum. It was observed that the Pectobacterium atrosepticum genomes are highly diverse in terms of their spacer distribution. Even the diversity was observed between genomes that was close in evolutionary distance. It was assumed that such diversity may arise from differences in their environmental or ecological niche, abundance of foreign invaders or spacer addition and deletion process. Moreover, further analysis of this information can lead the research to identify phage population that can be effective in controlling Pectobacterium atrosepticum.