{"id":212691,"date":"2025-04-29T01:34:06","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T06:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/first-atomic-map-of-potato-pathogen-reveals-potential-infection-mechanism"},"modified":"2025-04-29T01:34:06","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T06:34:06","slug":"first-atomic-map-of-potato-pathogen-reveals-potential-infection-mechanism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/first-atomic-map-of-potato-pathogen-reveals-potential-infection-mechanism","title":{"rendered":"First atomic map of potato pathogen reveals potential infection mechanism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/first-atomic-map-of-potato-pathogen-reveals-potential-infection-mechanism.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Plants are susceptible to a wide range of pathogens. For the common potato plant, one such threat is Pectobacterium atrosepticum, a bacterium that causes stems to blacken, tissues to decay, and often leads to plant death, resulting in significant agricultural losses each year.<\/p>\n<p>In 2012, researchers isolated a new virus that infects and kills this bacterium\u2014a bacteriophage named \u03c6TE (phiTE). Now, for the first time, scientists have uncovered the atomic structure of \u03c6TE, revealing a possible mechanism of infection that may be more complex than previously thought.<\/p>\n<p>The study, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-025-58514-x\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> earlier this month in <i>Nature Communications<\/i>, is the result of a multidisciplinary collaboration between researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) and the University of Otago. It brings together expertise across several fields, including virology, <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/structural+biology\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">structural biology<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/molecular+genetics\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">molecular genetics<\/a>, protein engineering, biochemistry, and biophysics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plants are susceptible to a wide range of pathogens. For the common potato plant, one such threat is Pectobacterium atrosepticum, a bacterium that causes stems to blacken, tissues to decay, and often leads to plant death, resulting in significant agricultural losses each year. In 2012, researchers isolated a new virus that infects and kills this [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,19,1506,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-food","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}