Review: How multifaceted salicylic acid combats disease in plants and humans

The journal BMC Biology publishes occasional Question and Answer articles, including a series on plant signals. In the latest installment of this series, Dempsey and Klessig write about the hormone salicylic acid (SA) and how it combats disease in plants and humans. The article focuses on SA in plants (synthesis, signalling, and function) but the inclusion of its use in medicine, first as a natural product and later as aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid), makes this fine review also useful for undergraduate education. BMC Biol. 10.1186/s12915-017-0364-8