Starvation as a weapon in fungal-plant warfare.
Vujakovic S, Kretschmer M, Kronstad JW
Summary
PubMedWhy it matters This matters because the same fungi attacking lab crops also threaten the wheat in your bread, the rice in your pantry, and the corn at your farmers market — and understanding how they hijack plant nutrition could lead to crops that don't need as many chemical fungicides.
Fungi that attack food crops are essentially engaged in a nutritional war with plants. Some plants have learned to cut off sugar supplies to invading fungi, while the fungi have evolved their own tricks — releasing proteins that drain phosphate from the plant, leaving it too weakened to fight back. Scientists are now uncovering these back-and-forth strategies in detail, which could help us breed or engineer crops that are much harder for dangerous fungi to defeat.
chevron_right Technical Details
Fungal diseases devastate food crops by manipulating nutrients — starving plants of carbohydrates and phosphate to weaken their defenses. New research reveals the molecular tricks fungi use and how plants fight back, opening doors to better crop protection strategies.
Key Findings
A newly discovered plant defense system actively triggers carbohydrate starvation in infected tissue to cut off sugar access to the head smut fungus (Sporisorium reilianum) attacking corn.
Rice blast fungus (Magnaporthe oryzae) deploys a novel class of effector proteins with Nudix hydrolase activity that causes phosphate deficiency inside host plants, directly impairing plant immune responses.
The plant hormones strigolactone and methyl jasmonate were found to influence phosphate and carbon metabolism in fungi, suggesting plants may use hormonal signals as an additional front in nutritional warfare.
Abstract Preview
Fungal pathogens cause devastating diseases in staple crops and pose a tremendous threat to food security. Therefore, it is critical to understand the mechanisms of fungal attack and plant defense....
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