doi:10.1093/jxb/erv115 Flowers under attack by phytoplasmas Frank Wellmer Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
[email protected] Phytoplasmas are cell wall-less bacteria that infect plants when they are transferred via sap-feeding insects such as leafhoppers. Plants infected with phytoplasmas can show a range of defects. One of them is the well- known witches’ broom disease, a massive overproliferation of shoots, often seen in nature on trees and shrubs. Another common defect of phytoplasma infection is termed phyllody, which is a conversion of floral organs into leaf-like structures (Fig. 1). This phenomenon is interesting from an evolutionary point of view as floral organs are thought to be modified leaves (Pelaz et al., 2001; von Goethe, 1790). Thus, phytoplasmas convert floral organs into something that resembles their developmental ground state. The molecular basis of phyllody is largely unknown but a recent paper by MacLean et al., (2014) has begun to shed light on the underlying mechanism. The authors elucidated how one effector of phytoplasma, a protein Fig. 1. An Arabidopsis wild-type flower (left) and a flower from a plant after phytoplasma infection showing phyllody (right). Figure from called SAP54 (MacLean et al., 2011), MacLean et al., 2014. induces phyllody in Arabidopsis thaliana. Using a yeast two-hybrid approach, they found that SAP54 physically interacts with several transcription factors of the MADS- domain family, which contains many key floral regulators. Among them are the APETALA1 (AP1) and SEPALLATA1 to 4 (SEP1-4) proteins that have important functions during the onset of flower development and/or the specification of floral organ identity, respectively (O’Maoileidigh et al., 2014; Sablowski, 2010).