IMR Press / FBL / Volume 12 / Issue 2 / DOI: 10.2741/2092

Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark (FBL) is published by IMR Press from Volume 26 Issue 5 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.

Article
Phytoplasmas: diversity, taxonomy, and epidemiology
Show Less
1 DiSTA, Plant Pathology, Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, viale Fanin, 42, 40127 Bologna, Italy
Front. Biosci. (Landmark Ed) 2007, 12(2), 673–689; https://doi.org/10.2741/2092
Published: 1 January 2007
Abstract

Phytoplasma associated diseases are spread worldwide, and in several cases are associated with severe epidemic of very often quarantine importance. These plant pathogens are prokaryotes belonging to the Mollicutes class since they lack a cell wall; up to now they were not cultivated in axenic culture therefore Koch postulates are only sometimes fulfilled by using alternative tools, such as graft or insect transmission. The possibility to design specific primers for highly conserved genes such as 16S ribosomal gene together with the use of molecular probes randomly cloned from phytoplasma genome, allowed discriminating and molecularly classifying them. Now a certain amount of knowledge is available that allow starting epidemiological studies in order to prevent further spreading of phytoplasma-associated diseases. In this paper molecular, biological and epidemiological characteristics of phytoplasma associated with important diseases worldwide are described.

Share
Back to top