Over millions of years, plants and pathogens have been engaged in an evolutionary war. As plants adopt new defense systems to protect themselves, pathogens evolve strategies to fight back. A well-characterized pathogen strategy is to secrete effectors that target plant defenses. Although protein effectors are well known, it was unclear whether non-protein effectors are a […]
Withania somnifera (ashwagandha) is popularly known for its most prominent bioactive compound called withanolide. This natural product has enormous medicinal potential and has traditionally been used in the Indian Ayurvedic system for more than 3000 years to treat various illnesses. However, the industrial production of withanolide remains a bottleneck due to the complex pathway and expensive extraction […]
Community and ecosystem ecology are the main pillars of agroecology. Plants exude various chemicals from their roots to communicate with belowground microorganisms to boost productivity. This article by Urcelay et al. offers a new perspective to understand the interaction between plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and highlights how flavonoids (FLVs) and strigolactones (SLs) act […]
Flowering plants are the most widespread group of plants, occupying almost every environment on our planet. They play important roles in maintaining the earth’s biodiversity and have a remarkably high rate of diversification. What’s always puzzled scientists is how they became so incredibly diverse. To explore this Schuster and colleagues looked at how gene activity […]