Tag: Biotic Interactions

During our holidays, many of us plant scientists love to go to re-energize in remote places, ideally with no technology. Have you ever imagined how our “advanced” way of living is changing our environment?  In a recent paper, Knop et al. show evidence that nocturnal pollinators are negatively affected…

Chanclud and Lacombe have written an intriguing Opinion article asking to what extent plant hormones affect animal gut microbiota and human disease. In support of this question, they observe that many microbes and even some animals can perceive and respond to plant hormones, or produce plant-hormone…

It’s not uncommon for viruses to manipulate the host’s membrane system to create protected structures for viral replication. These viral replication complexes (VRCs) “are thought to shield viruses from host defense systems such as RNA silencing, and … provide a microenvironment for enriching…

There’s only one thing worse than having a parasite suck the life juices out of you, and that’s having a parasite suck the life juices out of you while simultaneously injecting you with miRNAs to increase your vulnerability. Shahid et al. looked at microRNAs isolated from dodder (Cuscuta campestris),…

The relationship between plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi has persisted for 400 million years, but we are still learning about the biochemistry of this interaction. MacLean, Bravo and Harrison review how plants attract, recognize, and accommodate their fungal partners, from pre-contact through…

Fungal invasion exploits plant cell membrane trafficking components. For instance, plant immunity against fungi such as Vlumeria graminis f.sp. hordei (Bgh) is defined through two stages: pre- and post-invasive immunity. Nielsen et al. found that Vacuolar Protein Sorting 9a (VPS9a) acts as a guanine…

Insects compete directly with people for the energy and nutrients contained in plant matter, so it’s crucial for future food security to develop safe, effective and inexpensive means to control insect pests on crop plants. Zhang et al. review progress in using plant-mediated RNA interference (RNAi)…

Two of the key players in the plant-pathogen interaction are the effectors produced by pathogens (that “modulate plant physiology to favor host infection and colonization”) and the plant immune receptors (including NLR proteins: nucleotide-binding domain and leucine-rich repeatcontaining) that are…