Plant roots should prevent immune activation by innocuous soil microbiota, as constitutive immune activation is harmful to plant growth. Previous studies have indicated variable immune competence of different root cell types and developmental zones, but this is currently poorly understood with the fine spatial resolution. Emonet et al. combined cell-type specific expression of the immune […]
Disease spread within species-rich communities is hard to predict and prevent due to the dynamic transmission of parasites between multiple hosts that change in abundance and composition over time. To better understand the temporal dynamics of bee parasites in communities of plants and pollinators, Graystock and Ng et al. sampled 89 species of flowers and […]
The plant apoplast is a sea of immune-related proteins that facilitate robust defense against pathogens. Rcr3 is a tomato secreted apoplastic protease that contributes to both basal defense and gene-for-gene resistance against pathogens. Rcr3 is activated by the cleavage of its autoinhibitory prodomain, and it has been considered that the catalytic activity of Rcr3 is […]
Optogenetics has revolutionized mammalian biology by its ability to fine-tune gene expression in individual cells by pulses of light. However, its application in plants has been challenging because the white light required for plant growth misfires the system. Ochoa-Fernandez et al. solved this problem by engineered photoreceptors that can repress and induce gene expression driven […]
Chemical communications between species are prevalent in nature. For instance, herbivorous insects can spot their host plants by sensing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by plants. Despite our knowledge about interactions between individual plant and herbivore species, little is known about how chemical communications are structured and maintained in the ecological context. Zu et al. […]
The last two decades have witnessed tremendous progress in our understanding of plant microbiota. Fitzpatrick, Salas-González et al. highlight recent discoveries from culture-dependent and culture-independent approaches and discuss the future path towards integrating these approaches. Culture-independent approaches are census studies of microbial communities in various ecological contexts. Such studies reveal four factors that affect variation […]
Plants can recognize eggs of herbivorous insects deposited on leaves and mount defense responses to avoid the future threat of herbivory. Similar to plant hypersensitive response against pathogens, plants can cause localized cell death to defend themselves against insect eggs. This response is called a hypersensitive-like response (HR-like). Despite similarities between HR-like and well-studied plant […]
In nature, plants face multiple environmental stresses simultaneously. Plant responses to combined stresses are often not merely the sum of responses to individual stresses; in the tissue that initially perceive stresses (local tissue), plants can integrate different stress signals to elicit unique responses. Plants can also respond to stresses systemically by sending signals from the […]
Amplicon sequencing of microbial DNA is a gold standard for analyzing the relative abundance of microbes in host-associated microbiomes. To gain more accurate insights into microbiome changes, it is crucial to know the absolute abundance of microbes, which can be analyzed by integrating relative abundance information with the total microbial load measured, which is measured […]