Importance of Agrobacterium tumefaciens in plant genetic engineering
Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a pathogenic bacterium which causes diseases in several floweing plants (specially in dicots). It is mainly known to cause crowny gall disease. This bacterium has got so much importance in genetic engineering field mainly because of having Ti (tumour inducing) plasmid in its cell. This Ti plasmid contains a particular region called T-DNA (transfer DNA) . This T-DNA segment gets transferred to the plant body and ultimately the plant gets infected with crowny gall disease. The T-DNA has certain genes that code for some particular enzymes which in turn catalyzes for the synthesis of growth regulators like auxins, cytokinins etc. These growth regulators in turn induces tumorous growth in plants. This is the concept of Ti plasmid through which good valuable genes can be inserted into target organism. Thats why , Agrobacterium tumefaciens is regarded as the natural genetic engineer.