Integrated Experimental and Transcriptomic Analyses of Motility Genes in <i>Ralstonia solanacearum</i> F1C1

The phytopathogen Ralstonia solanacearum is responsible for the "bacterial wilt disease" in several crop species worldwide, viz., tomato, brinjal, chilli, potato, groundnut, etc. This results in the yellowing of host plants, wilting, and finally their death. Motility is an essential requirement of plant pathogens, which helps them to infect and navigate through the host tissues and spread inside the host plant. The phytopathogen R. solanacearum exhibits motility such as twitching and swimming, which are governed by pili and flagella, respectively. This study aims to delineate the role of pili and flagella encoding genes, such as pilY_1, fliP, and fliG, by recognising the genes and their associated pathways. Disruption of these genes led to the creation of three motility mutants of the R. solanacearum F1C1 strain. Motility assays showed that the ΔfliP and ΔfliG mutants were significantly altered in terms of swimming ability. Further, transcriptomic analysis identified the differentially expressed genes in the respective altered mutants.