Research led by the University of Warwick has found that bacteria could save orchards from the almost incurable disease of fire blight.
The researchers were interested in the bacteria naturally produced a family of chemicals called desferrioxamines. Desferrioxamine E is produced by the bacterium Erwinia amylovora. This bacterium can damage apple or pear trees by extracting iron from them. This allows it to establish an infection that leads to the economically-damaging agricultural disease known as fire blight, that can sweep through an orchard if the infected trees are not removed.
The new understanding of how desferrioxamine E is created by Erwinia amylovora opens the way for the creation of new chemical inhibitors that may prevent this bacterium from inflicting fire blight on orchards.
Professor Greg Challis from the University of Warwick led the research, which involved colleagues from the University of Warwick and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. The full report has been published online in Nature Chemical Biology.
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