Tag: Plant Defense

Climate change is a major threat to potato, as high temperatures inhibit tuberization and reduce yield. A recent study by Yeo and colleagues screened for heat-tolerance in offspring from one tolerant and one sensitive parent potato cultivar. SELF-PRUNING 6A (SP6A), encoding a phloem-mobile tuberization…

This review by Somssich et al., part of a forthcoming Focus Collection on Metabolites, provides an overview of the chemical arsenal of defense compounds in plants. Playfully titled “Guns in Rosettes”, it focuses on the well-characterized model plant Arabidopsis. The article discusses defense metabolites…

Plants, like animals, have a natural immune system that helps them defend against diseases. They not only fight local pathogens but can also alert distant, non-infected tissues to prepare for infection, a process called systemic acquired resistance (SAR). All these mechanisms can be threatened by climate…

At the height of the Covid pandemic, epidemiologists carried out mass sequencing of the circulating virus populations to track their movements and the emergence of new variants. Such molecular epidemiological studies are rarer for plant pathogens but can be equally effective in learning about their patterns…

The interaction between plants and pathogens is often described as an evolutionary arms race, in which plants develop multilayered immune signaling to counteract direct extracellular attacks and intracellular chemical effectors. The type III secretion system (T3SS) of Gram-negative bacteria serves as…

The soil microbiome harbors a vast diversity of microorganisms that can be pathogenic, beneficial, or commensal to plants. A fundamental question in plant biology is how plants actively detect, differentiate, and optimize their associations with the microbiome to maintain optimal fitness. In a recent…

Plants and pathogens are locked in a co-evolutionary arms race. Pathogens secrete effectors into plants, leading to effector-triggered susceptibility. Plants in turn respond through the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the expression of defence-related genes to defend themselves, which…

Memory—a mysterious cognitive process that retains information over time and shapes future interpretations and actions—is not exclusive to animals. In plants, a similar phenomenon occurs where past exposure to environmental stressors is “memorized,” enabling plants to respond more effectively…