Tag: Biotic Interactions

The corn smut fungus Ustilago maydis manipulates maize tissues and cells through the secretion of effectors that modulate host protein activities. In a recent article published in Nature Communications, Ma et al. characterize a highly repetitive effector protein family (Rsp3, repetitive secreted protein…

Most vascular plants establish in their roots a multifunctional symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi.  Among the 29% that do not host AM fungi are 66-92%  of the members of the Brassicaceae family, including some major crops (broccoli, oilseed rape) as well as the model plant Arabidopsis…

Xiao et al. used 1,033 rice accessions for GWAS to identify QTLs associated with cold tolerance.  In general, japonica-type varieties showed greater cold tolerance than indica types.  The authors identified many QTLs for cold tolerance at the seedling and booting (initiation of panicles) stages. They…

Zhang et al. show how PSK initiates Ca2+- and auxin-dependent immunity https://doi.org/10.1105/tpc.17.00537.  By Huan Zhang, Zhangjian Hu and Kai Shi Background: During plant-microbe interactions, some small secreted peptides are secreted into the apoplast between plant cells as damage-associated…

By Karina van der Linde and Virginia Walbot  Background: In contrast to animals in which meiotically competent cells develop in embryos, plants switch from vegetative to reproductive growth only during flowering. In maize, the most productive cereal crop, the tassel contains male flowers in which…

Plants are exposed to a wide variety of biotic stressors such as herbivores and microbial pathogens. Thus, they have developed a sophisticated response system which involves different signal molecules and accurate signaling pathway responses. Among them, phytosulfokine (PSK), a disulfated pentapeptide,…

Autophagy has been defined as non-specific self-eating to obtain material that will be used for key processes within the cell. Even through authophagy has been demonstrated to be very important, its role during plant-bacteria interactions is not well known.  Üstün et al. examined interactions between…

Many pathogens produce virulence factors that improve their pathogenicity, including in some cases compounds produced by the host, such as the hormone cytokinin. Spallek et al. review the various plant pathogens — spanning from bacteria to parasitic plants — that use cytokinins as virulence factors;…