Abstract

The soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a plant pathogen that causes crown gall tumors by infecting the wounded dicotyledonous plants and subsequent integration of bacterial DNA into plant nuclear DNA. Virulent A. tumefaciens strains harbor a large Ti (tumor–inducing) plasmid that carries genes essential for tumorigenesis. In the present study, 13 strains (Malus pumila Mill; A₁₋₃, Populus monilifera; W₁₋₆, Populus tomentiglandlosa; P₁₋₃ and Rosa species; R₁) of Agrobacterium isolated in korean crown gall tumors and plasmids were observed in 6 strains (W₂, W₃, W₆, P₁, P₃ and A₂). The test for crown gall tumor formation was resulted only in ATCC15955 and KW2 strains inoculated into the stem of sun flower and the development was observed for 4 and 6 weeks after inoculation. Above two Ti plasmids (pTi) were purified by cesium chloride-ethidium bromide density gradient centrifugation and digested with restriction enzyme and fragments of pTiATCC15955 and pTiKW₂ observed by EcoR I ; 25&27, Hind III ; 23&21, BamH I ; each 20 and Hpa I ; 12&27. And sizes of pTiATCC15955 and and pTiKW₂ calculated as 200 and 87 kbases. Octopine was isolated from tumor tissue (W₁₋₆ and P₁₋₃) and these strains confirmed as octopine type.