PubMed · 2026-06-09
Researchers discovered that a compound made by fungi can stop plants from building their cell walls by dismantling the molecular machines that produce cellulose. This opens new doors for developing herbicides that target weeds in completely new ways, and for engineering crops that resist multiple weed-killers at once.
A fungal compound called 8-methyldichlorodiaporthin (MDD) blocks cellulose production in plants by pulling the cellulose-making machinery away from the cell surface where it normally operates.
Two specific genetic mutations in a cellulose-building protein (CESA1) — at positions A903T and H1024Y — make plants completely resistant to MDD, pinpointing exactly where the compound strikes.
Stacking multiple resistance mutations (against MDD, isoxaben, and ES20) into a single plant line produced crops that resisted all three herbicide classes while still growing normally.
