Recent Posts

All Roads Lead to Rome: Multiple Pathways Close Stomata in Plant Defense

Zheng et al. reveal that plant endogenous peptides and their receptors initiate stomatal closure to prevent microbes’ entry, thus enhancing plant immunity. The Plant Cell (2018) https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00701. By Xiaojiang Zheng and Sheng Luan. Background: Unlike animals, plants can’t…

Diterpenoid Defense in Host- and Non-host Disease Resistance in Rice

Lu et al. show that diterpenoids contribute to disease resistance in rice. Plant Cell. (2018). https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.18.00205 Background: Rice (Oryza sativa) is an important food crop. Diseases caused by the fungal blast pathogen Magnaporthe oryzae and bacterial leaf blight pathogen Xanthomonas…

Convergent evolution of effector protease recognition by Arabidopsis and barley (bioRxiv)

Pathogenic bacteria Pseudomonas syringae produce an effector protein, AvrPphB. The indirect interaction between this bacterial effector and the Arabidopsis resistance (R) protein RPS5 has been characterized previously; AvrPphB is a cysteine protease that targets another plant protein, PBS1, causing it…

Arabidopsis thaliana-associated Pseudomonas diversity and evolution

There is not much available information regarding the evolutionary aspects of one of the most studied pathosystem in plant biology: Arabidopsis thaliana and Pseudomonas. Karazov et al. performed various surveys in Arabidopsis wild populations, for the detection and characterization of their associated…

Singlet Oxygen and Osmotic Stress

Some experimental systems aimed at understanding the effects of drought on plants have incorporated cell-impermeable high molecular weight polyethylene glycol (PEG) to mimic the osmotic component of drought stress. The use of PEG showed that drought stress response could be separated into components…

The role of the seventh subfamily of cytoplasmic receptor kinases in plant immunity revealed by genetics

Source: Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology Published: 2018-07-09 http://www.cas.cn/syky/201807/t20180704_4657120.shtml Translation by Google Pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) on plant cell membranes recognize some of the conserved molecular patterns derived from pathogens that…

A new mechanism for plant immune pathways discovered by genetics

Source: Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology Published: 2018-07-05 http://www.cas.cn/syky/201807/t20180704_4657121.shtml (Translation by Google Translate) Plants sense the presence of pathogens through pattern recognition receptors (PRRs ) located on the surface of the cell membrane to…

The Phytophthora RXLR effector AVR3a12 suppresses ER-mediated plant immunity (Mol. Plant)

The pathogenic oomycete Phytophthora capsici secretes RXLR effector proteins into plant cells to subvert host cell machinery and facilitate disease. Several RXLR effector proteins have been characterized to date, however, Phytophthora species encode a vast array of effector molecules that likely target…

Phylogenomics reveals multiple losses of nitrogen-fixing root nodule symbiosis (Science)

The ability to participate in nitrogen-fixing root nodule symbiosis shows an interesting phylogenetic pattern, with some families showing a large number of nodulating species interspersed with non-nodulating ones, and some families showing only a few nodulating species. A current model suggests that…