title: Paradigms: examples from the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa.
abstract: The history of advances in research on Xylella fastidiosa provides excellent examples of how paradigms both advance and limit our scientific understanding of plant pathogens and the plant diseases they cause. I describe this from a personal perspective, having been directly involved with many persons who made paradigm-changing discoveries, beginning with the discovery that a bacterium, not a virus, causes Pierce's disease of grape and other plant diseases in numerous plant species, including important crop and forest species.
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-3114, USA. ahpurcell@berkeley.edu
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Purcell
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002957:Citrus / Q000382:microbiology*; D007303:Insect Vectors / Q000382:microbiology*; D010935:Plant Diseases / Q000382:microbiology*; D027843:Vitis / Q000382:microbiology; D044167:Xylella / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D052584:Xylem / Q000382:microbiology