PubMed · 2026-06-09
Scientists discovered that a common bread mold (Neurospora crassa) can quietly live inside the roots of a grass without causing disease, and identified two specific proteins—located in specialized membrane compartments called eisosomes—that are essential for the fungus to establish this peaceful partnership.
Neurospora crassa, previously classified as strictly saprotrophic (feeding only on dead matter), colonizes roots and vascular bundles of Brachypodium distachyon without triggering disease symptoms.
Deletion of either ncw-6 or div-23—two proteins localized to eisosomes (plasma membrane microdomains)—completely abolished root colonization, while disrupting MAP kinase and NADPH oxidase signaling pathways did not.
This is the first report implicating eisosome-associated proteins as essential components of a plant-fungal interaction, suggesting eisosomes may play a broad role in how fungi interface with living plant tissue.
