DETECTION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THE AFRICAN CITRUS GREENING LIBEROBACTER BY AMPLIFICATION, CLONING, AND SEQUENCING OF THE RPLKAJL-RPOBC OPERON

Greening disease of citrus is caused by a phloem-restricted, uncultured bacterium, recently characterized and named Liberobacter. As shown previously, a probe encoding ribosomal protein genes (rplKAJL-rpoBC operon) from an Asian liberobacter could detect all Asian liberobacter strains tested, but not African strains. Using the sequence of the rplKAJL-rpoBC operon of the Asian liberobacter strain from Poona (India), we have defined primers for PCR amplification of the equivalent genes of an African liberobacter strain. The amplified fragment was cloned in pUC18 and successfully used as a probe to detect African liberobacter strains by Southern and dot hybridizations. Sequence comparisons of the African and Asian liberobacter operons indicate that they represent two different species in the proposed genus Liberobacter.