Building blocks toward cell surface receptor-mediated immunity in plants.
Garcia-Ramirez GX, Foo MH, Nakagami H
Plant Signaling
Every tomato plant that shrugs off blight, every oak that outlasts a fungal attack, is running an immune system whose origins this research is beginning to map — and understanding those origins is the first step toward crops and garden plants that defend themselves without pesticides.
Plants can't run away from disease, so they have built-in alarm systems on the outside and inside of their cells to detect invading bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Scientists are now piecing together how these alarm systems first appeared, likely when ancient plants crawled out of the ocean and onto land hundreds of millions of years ago. Each plant species has evolved a slightly different set of detectors shaped by the specific germs and conditions in its local environment.
Key Findings
Plants use two distinct classes of immune receptors: cell-surface receptors that detect conserved microbial molecules outside the cell, and intracellular receptors that catch effector proteins injected by pathogens attempting to hijack immune responses.
Immune receptor genes evolve unusually rapidly, with each plant species carrying a markedly different gene repertoire — likely reflecting the unique microbial pressures of each species' ecological habitat.
The review proposes that cell surface receptor-mediated immunity may have originated during the evolutionary transition from aquatic to terrestrial life, making it one of the oldest layers of the plant immune system.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Plants evolved a two-layer immune system — one that detects microbial invaders at the cell surface, another that catches molecules sneaked inside the cell — and this review traces how that system may have originated when plants first moved from water onto land.
Abstract Preview
Land plants possess an innate immune system that enables their survival in terrestrial environments and allows them to interact with a wide range of microorganisms, some of which can be pathogenic....
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
Was this useful?
Want to tell us more? (optional)
Thanks for the note!
Something went wrong — please try again.
Too many submissions. Try again in an hour.
Chloroplast Genome Editing Eliminates Gluten Immunogenicity in Triticum aestivum
It could mean that people with celiac disease — roughly 1 in 100 worldwide — may one day safely eat bread made from real wheat, without sacrificing the taste...