Isolation and subculture of plant mycoplasma, and the effect of antibiotics on the organism in vivo and electron microscope studies of infected cells

Abstract

The yellows diseases of plants comprise a group of more than 40 known diseases which affect many important food, forage, and horticultural plants. For many years the causal agents of these diseases were considered to be viruses, based on symptom expression, insect transmission and grafting. Plant pathologists did not consider or even suspect mycoplasma as causal agents of plant diseases before 1967 (10). Current reports now indicate that many of the yellows diseases of plants are not caused by viruses but rather by mycoplasma (6, 7, 10, 19, 20, 21, 25, 43). Since the first report in 1967 that implicated mycoplasma as etiological agents of plant diseases, workers have attempted to obtain the organism into pure culture. ...