Transcending the jasmonate-mediated growth-defense trade-off: Pathways to unlocking plant potential.
Zhu J, Hu S, Cai Y, Wang C, Xie D
Plant Signaling
Every tomato plant you've watched stall after a caterpillar attack is living this trade-off — researchers are now close to engineering crops that fight back without sacrificing the season's harvest.
Plants use a chemical signal called jasmonate to defend themselves when attacked by insects or pathogens, but that same signal tells the plant to stop growing. Scientists are now mapping ways to keep the defense switched on while letting growth continue normally. The toolkit includes boosting the plant's ability to photosynthesize, tweaking the signaling chain, and using specialized molecules that trigger defense without triggering the growth brake.
Key Findings
Jasmonate (JA) orchestrates both immune responses and growth suppression through the same signaling pathway, creating an inherent trade-off that limits crop productivity under stress.
Four decoupling strategies show promise: expanding photosynthetic capacity, rewiring JA signaling networks, optimizing the timing of JA bursts, and using subtype-selective JA agonists that degrade targeted proteins without broad growth inhibition.
Future directions include fine-tuning chloroplast function, manipulating damage-associated molecular pattern (DAMP) signaling, and remodeling JA regulatory proteins to achieve resilience without yield penalty.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Plants face a built-in dilemma: the same hormone that triggers pest and disease defenses also slows growth. This review outlines new strategies to break that link, so crops could be both well-defended and high-yielding at the same time.
Abstract Preview
Jasmonate (JA) is a key phytohormone that balances defense and growth processes to orchestrate plant survival in response to external conditions. Although JA-mediated resistance to biotic and abiot...
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