Tag: Biotic Interactions

Vector-borne viruses such as rice stripe virus (RSV) are transmitted from plant to plant by insects such as planthoppers. Plants under attack often emit volatile compounds such as methyl salicylate (MeSA) that attract parasitoid wasps that destroy the eggs of the virus-transmitting insects. In a recent…

Nitrogen is a key nutrient for plant development, and plant nutrient acquisition is highly influenced by the rhizosphere microbiome. However, how host genomic variation and root transcriptional regulation shape microbiome assembly under field conditions remains unclear. Li and colleagues addressed this…

A natural antisense transcript (NAT) is a form of non-coding RNA that shares sequence complementarity with a protein coding sense gene. Although originally thought to be transcriptional noise, recent findings show that NATs contain functional roles, often through the regulation of their cognate sense…

Can the stress experienced by parents enhance the resilience of their offspring? In this study, Atighi et al. investigated whether rice plants can inherit resistance against the root-knot nematode Meloidogyne graminicola from their infected parents. Their research demonstrates that offspring of nematode-infected…

When we talk of pollination, we often imagine colorful flowers and scents that attract insects to the flowers. However, flowers are a hallmark of angiosperms. How cone-bearing gymnosperms attract their pollinators has been a long-standing question. In a recent study, Valencia-Montoya et al. investigated…

One of the main challenges in plant virology is detecting the active replicase enzyme of positive-strand RNA viruses in living cells, since adding fluorescent tags often prevents it from functioning. A recent study in Plant Physiology by Ishihara et al. has found a way around this problem. The researchers…

Plant pathogens often succeed not by brute force, but by subtly rewiring host developmental programs. Ustilago maydis, the basidiomycete fungus responsible for maize common smut, exemplifies this strategy by inducing tumor-like galls on aerial organs of its host. Although the U. maydis genome encodes…

In nature, plants often face multiple attackers simultaneously, giving rise to complex three-way interactions that can reshape defense outcomes in unexpected ways. An intriguing example comes from observations that prior aphid infestation, or even pretreatment with aphid honeydew, suppresses the jasmonic…