Agrobacterium tumefaciens Chemotaxis Protocols
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Directed movement in response to chemical attractants is of crucial importance to Agrobacterium tumefaciens
. Motility is a determinant of rhizosphere competence (1
), and chemotaxis a conditional requirement for virulence (2
,3
). A. tumefaciens
is attracted toward a variety of sugars typical of plant exudates (4
). Responses to nanomolar amounts of phenolic wound exudates are chiefly determined by the Ti-plasmid encoded virulence genes
vir
A and vir
G (5
,6
). The sensitivity of these responses indicates that they play a role in the biology of A. tumefaciens
. Thus, the attraction to sugars can partly explain the organism’s prevalence in the rhizosphere (7
) and the highly sensitive response to phenolics, may help to guide A. tumefaciens
to wounded plant cells (8
,9
).
