A bacterial disease (Agrobacterium tumefaciens) that causes tumor like galls at the crown and roots of a very wide range of woody and herbaceous plants, including grape, stone fruit, roses and nursery nut trees, by transferring a piece of its own DNA into the host plant's genome. That natural gene transfer mechanism, discovered through study of the disease, was later adapted by scientists into one of the standard tools of plant genetic engineering.
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Grape, Crops Crown gall (Agrobacterium vitis) is a major soil-borne bacterial disease of grapevine, especially in nurseries.
Sources
1. Crown Gall (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationOpening definition paragraph
Agrobacterium tumefaciens is the causal agent of crown gall disease in over 140 species of eudicots. It is a rod-shaped, Gram-negative soil bacterium. Symptoms are caused by the insertion of a small segment of DNA, from a plasmid into the plant cell, which is incorporated at a semi-random location into the plant genome. Plant genomes can be engineered by use of Agrobacterium for the delivery of sequences hosted in T-DNA binary vectors.
lead description
A bacterial disease (Agrobacterium tumefaciens) that causes tumor like galls at the crown and roots of a very wide range of woody and herbaceous plants, including grape, stone fruit, roses and nursery nut trees, by transferring a piece of its own DNA into the host plant's genome.
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