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Proper Credit Is Due

Strategy Expands Screening for Bacterial Effectors Key to Plant Diseases

The June 2002 issue of ASM News carries a Current Topics article about a novel screen for P. syringae effectors in Arabidopsis thaliana (p. 262). The method involves random chromosomal fusions of a known effector gene to trap possible Type III secretion signals. The article identifies the work, published in a recent issue of Science, as due to David Guttman and colleagues in Toronto and his collaborators at the University of Chicago. Three times the University of Chicago group is mentioned, but never the name of the person responsible. That person is my colleague Jean Greenberg. It is my impression that she initiated the program. Guttman was her postdoc in Chicago, during which time the screen was initiated, before he moved to Toronto. Furthermore, a large portion of the screen for effectors and their analysis for the Science paper was done in Greenberg's lab by the co-first author of the Science article, Boris Vinatzer, a postdoctoral fellow. The ASM News article has done Greenberg a disservice by quoting Guttman at such length and not even mentioning Greenberg, as though she provided some technical assistance and nothing more. I believe that a correction of the record is due.

Robert Haselkorn
University of Chicago
Chicago, Ill.