A host shift as the origin of tomato bacterial canker caused by Clavibacter michiganensis

Abstract

The Actinomycetota (formerly Actinobacteria) genus Clavibacter includes phytopathogens with devasting effects in several crops. Clavibacter michiganensis, the causal agent of tomato bacterial canker, is the most notorious species of the genus. Yet, its origin and natural reservoirs remain elusive, and its populations show pathogenicity profiles with unpredictable plant disease outcomes. Here, we generate and analyse a decade-long genomic dataset of Clavibacter from wild and commercial tomato cultivars, providing evolutionary insights that directed phenotypic characterization. Our phylogeny situates the last common ancestor of C. michiganensis next to Clavibacter isolates from grasses rather than to the sole strain we could isolate from wild tomatoes. Pathogenicity profiling of C. michiganensis isolates, together with C. phaseoli and C. californiensis as sister taxa and the wild tomato strain, was found to be congruent with the proposed phylogenetic relationships. We then identified gene enrichment after the evolutionary event, leading to the appearance of the C. michiganesis clade, including known pathogenicity factors but also hitherto unnoticed genes with the ability to encode adaptive traits for a pathogenic lifestyle. The holistic perspective provided by our evolutionary analyses hints towards a host shift event as the origin of C. michiganensis as a tomato pathogen and the existence of pathogenic genes that remain to be characterized.