Tag: Biotic Interactions

Huot et al. describe how elevated temperature (30 °C) enhances Arabidopsis thaliana disease susceptibility to the bacteria Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 (Pst DC3000): this includes an increase of bacterial type III secretion suggesting that increased Pst DC3000 virulence at 30°C is linked…

Plasmodesmata are plasma membrane-enclosed pores between cells that were initially described by Tangl in 1879 as ‘open communications’ between protoplasts of endosperm cells. These structures are regulated by callose deposition from the apoplast and play an important regulatory role in stress and…

Previously, the authors identified an Arabidopsis mutant that shows resistance to a widespread oomycete pathogen. In this new work, Wang et al. identified the Phytophthora sojae susceptible gene locus, PSS1, which encodes a plasma-membrane localized glycine-rich protein. When introduced into soybean…

The plant immune system is often described as having two parts, one which recognizes extracellular conserved microbial signals (pattern-triggered immunity: PTI) and one which is stimulated by the presence of specific microbial effectors (effector-triggered immunity: ETI).  Through a forward-genetic…

Pathogenic microbes translocate effector molecules into plant cells that subvert host immune responses and promote disease. In a recent article published in Cell Host & Microbe, Chen et al. (2017) describe an exciting new interaction between the Pseudomonas syringae effector AvrPtoB and its cognate…

Plant-to-plant communication allows plant neighbors to be warned by plant peers of stresses such as herbivory activity, sometimes by triggering priming processes. Systemin is an 18-amino acid hormone, firstly identified in tomato as a inducer of the wound response. Coppola et al. report the role of systemin…

Within the same species, plant responses to pathogens vary depending on the plant genotype. The correlation between phenotypic and genetic variation is a great resource for finding genes involved in plant-pathogen interactions.  By using a set of natural accessions of Medicago truncatula (HapMap population)…

Of the many classes of natural products produced by plants, terpenoids are the most structurally diverse, with well over 25,000 established compounds. In maize (Zea mays), terpene olefins are nearly ubiquitous components of induced volatile emissions following biotic stress. In contrast to our understanding…