Fig. 1: Genomic and virulence comparisons of Xcm isolates.
From: Activation of three targets by a TAL effector confers susceptibility to bacterial blight of cotton
A Geographical locations and collection years of Xcm isolates. Xcm TX4, TX7, and TX9 were from infected cotton leaves in Texas. Xcm H1005 is a derivative of Xcm H from Oklahoma30 and Xcm MSCT1 is from Mississippi29. Green circle sizes indicate the relative acreage of cotton production in the region. Created in BioRender. Mormile, B. (2025) https://BioRender.com/g97n131/. B Xcm isolates induce variable degrees of water-soaked lesions in cotton. Xcm isolates were syringe-inoculated at OD600 = 0.1 into ten-day-old cotton cotyledons with photos shown at five days post-inoculation (dpi). C Xcm TX4 and TX7 elicit more severe water-soaked lesions than Xcm TX9. Water-soaked lesions in (B) were analyzed using ImageJ FIJI81. Data are shown as the negative grayscale means ± s.e. of water-soaked lesions for Xcm isolates relative to Xcm HM2.2 from 9 independent repeats (n = 9) The asterisks indicate a significant difference (***p < 0.001, ns = no significance) compared to Xcm HM2.2 control using a two-tailed Student’s t-test. D Genome comparisons of Xcm isolates. Genome alignment was conducted using progressiveMAUVE67 with default parameters. Colored rectangles represent locally collinear blocks of homology without any rearrangement across the aligned sequences. Xcm TX4, TX7, and TX9 each harbor a circular 5-megabase pair (Mb) chromosome, two 52-kilobase plasmids (pXCM52.4 kb and pXCM52kb), and a 15-kb plasmid (pXCM15kb), with overall sequence identities exceeding 99%. Xcm TX4 contains an inverted region in the chromosome and an additional tandem 12 bp (*) sequence in pXCM15kb compared to Xcm TX7 and TX9. Xcm MSCT1 harbors a circular 5-Mb chromosome, one 15 kb plasmid (pMSCT15kb), one 60 kb plasmid (pMSCT60kb), and one 44 kb plasmid (pMSCT44kb). Xcm H1005 contains a 5 Mb chromosome and one 88 kb plasmid. The genome sequences of Xcm H1005 and MSCT1 were from the National Center of Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database. The experiments in B, C were repeated four times with a similar result. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
