Understanding pathogenic Burkholderia glumae metabolic and signaling pathways within rice tissues through in vivo transcriptome analyses

• We perform in vivo (in planta) RNAseq of plant pathogenic Burkholderia bacteria.
• We monitor most of genes (over 95% coverage) in B. glumae within rice tissues.
• The sugar metabolic pathways of B. glumae were changed to survive in infected host.
• B. glumae chemotaxis-mediated motility is one of important infection processes.

Burkholderia glumae is a causal agent of rice grain and sheath rot. Similar to other phytopathogens, B. glumae adapts well to the host environment and controls its biology to induce diseases in the host plant; however, its molecular mechanisms are not yet fully understood. To gain a better understating of the actual physiological changes that occur in B. glumae during infection, we analyzed B. glumae transcriptome from infected rice tissues using an RNA-seq technique. To accomplish this, we analyzed differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and identified 2653 transcripts that were significantly altered. We then performed KEGG pathway and module enrichment of the DEGs. Interestingly, most genes involved bacterial chemotaxis-mediated motility, ascorbate and trehalose metabolisms, and sugar transporters including l-arabinose and d-xylose were found to be highly enriched. The in vivo transcriptional profiling of pathogenic B. glumae will facilitate elucidation of unknown plant-pathogenic bacteria interactions, as well as the overall infection processes.