Tag: Plant Immunity

Although calcium ions are universal second messengers, plants employ both conserved and unique strategies to decode Ca²⁺ signals. In a new review in Cell, Sheng Luan reviews the molecular tools used to study calcium signaling in plants and the mechanisms that govern this process. Like other cells,…

Plant roots exude organic compounds such as benzoxazinoids (BXs) to the surrounding soil. BXs modulate soil microbiota, which in turn regulate plant growth. In this study, Stengele et al. show that BX-modulated soil microbiota also promote plant immunity. The authors first pretreated soil with BXs by…

Tea plants (Camellia sinenesis) are usually cultivated in warm and humid regions where fungal infections are favoured. Foliar diseases directly affect the quality of the leaves that are used for tea production. Colletotrichum camelliae is a common fungal pathogen infecting tea plants. Previous studies…

A natural antisense transcript (NAT) is a form of non-coding RNA that shares sequence complementarity with a protein coding sense gene. Although originally thought to be transcriptional noise, recent findings show that NATs contain functional roles, often through the regulation of their cognate sense…

In this preprint, Wang et al. unravel a novel role for ARGONAUTE10 (AGO10) in plant immunity. Specifically, they found that AGO10 is involved in trans-species RNA interference (tsRNAi), a mechanism plants use to silence target genes in pathogens. Upon Phytophthora capsici infection, two distinct ago10…

Salicylic acid (SA) is best known as a central hormone orchestrating plant immune response, including the hypersensitive reaction and systemic acquired resistance. Beyond defense, SA also influences plant growth and development, highlighting a delicate role in balancing the trade-off between immunity…

When drought strikes, plants struggle to survive. Growth slows, flowers appear too early, fruits drop prematurely, and harvests shrink. Scientists have long tried to engineer drought tolerance plants, but boosting this often comes with a hidden cost: stunted growth even when water is plentiful. This…

Grapevine is an important crop in the food industry. Like other crops, cultivated grapevine benefits from wild relatives that can be used for genetic resource mining and cultivar improvement. Useful genetic resources include novel alleles and gene expression regulators for better growth and stress resilience.…