New discoveries about how diseases spread in bean plants could help researchers to develop new ways to prevent diseases in the crop.

Scientists have discovered that bean plants' natural defences against bacterial infections could be unwittingly driving the evolution of more highly pathogenic bacteria.

The research published in Current Biology is based on a joint project led by the University of the West of England in partnership with Imperial College London and the University of Reading.

Significant work was conducted by PhD student Helen Lovell from UWE, who said: "This work is a leap forward in understanding bacterial evolution. The transfer of large pieces of DNA containing possibly hundreds of genes from one bacterium to another has only been theorised in plant pathogens and never before demonstrated happening naturally within the plant.

"This work gives an insight into how pathogens evolve within host plants, which may help in developing new methods of disease control to prevent costly damage to bean and other crops."

Dr Dawn Arnold from UWE's School of Life Sciences, co-author of the study, added: "Although this work involves plant-bacteria interactions it also has a wider significance in that it could lead to a greater understanding of how bacteria evade the immune system of different hosts including humans."

The research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).