phytoplasma
Americannoun
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Any of a group of extremely small bacteria that are similar to mycoplasmas in that they have a cell membrane instead of cell walls and can assume a variety of shapes, but are parasitic solely in plants. In many plants, phytoplasmas invade cells of the food-carrying tissue known as phloem and are usually spread by plant-sucking insects, such as the leafhopper, which draws its food from phloem. Phytoplasmas cause some 200 plant diseases affecting several hundred genera of plants.
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See also mycoplasma
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Researchers have uncovered the intricate molecular mechanism used by parasitic phytoplasma bacteria, known for inducing 'zombie-like' effects in plants.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 5, 2023
Sugar accumulates on the leaves of an infected plant and is converted to starch, providing a reliable marker of phytoplasma infection in other crops, such as citrus groves.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 20, 2022
Along for the ride will be their good friend, the phytoplasma.
From New York Times ● Oct. 1, 2021
SAP05 is not the first substance made by this phytoplasma that the scientists have linked to the symptoms it causes.
From New York Times ● Oct. 1, 2021
“It looks like it stays in a juvenile phase,” said Saskia Hogenhout, a scientist at the John Innes Centre in England, who studies the life cycle of the parasite, which is called Aster Yellows phytoplasma.
From New York Times ● Oct. 1, 2021
How the parasite exerts such wide-ranging control is a subject of more than casual curiosity among scientists — phytoplasmas can cause destructive disease in crop plants like carrots.
From New York Times ● Oct. 1, 2021
The same interaction between SAP54 and these plant proteins increased the plants' attraction for the leafhoppers that transmit phytoplasmas.
From Scientific American ● Apr. 9, 2014
When plants are infected by parasitic bacteria called phytoplasmas, their flowers turn into leafy shoots, their petals turn green and they develop a mass of shoots called ‘witches’ brooms’.
From Scientific American ● Apr. 9, 2014
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
