The majority of plant pathogens are fungi and many of these adversely affect food security. This mini-review aims to provide an analysis of the plant pathogenic fungi for which genome sequences are publically available, to assess their general genome characteristics, and to consider how genomics has impacted plant pathology. A list of sequenced fungal species was assembled, the taxonomy of all ...

Accelerated gene evolution is a hallmark of pathogen adaptation following a host jump. Here, we describe the biochemical basis of adaptation and specialization of a plant pathogen effector after its colonization of a new host. Orthologous protease inhibitor effectors from the Irish potato famine pathogen, Phytophthora infestans, and its sister species, Phytophthora mirabilis, which is responsib...

The phytohormone auxin has been known to be a regulator of plant growth and development ever since its discovery. Recent studies on plant-pathogen interactions identify auxin as a key character in pathogenesis and plant defense. Like plants, diverse pathogens possess the capacity to synthesize indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), the major form of auxin in plants. The emerging knowledge on auxin-signali...

co-hydroxyfatty acids1}. Most plant pathogenic fungi invade their hosts by breaching the intact plant surface, and the cuticle including the polymeric cutin comprises the first barrier to be penetrated. For several host-pathogen interactions it has been demonstrated that cutin-hydrolyzing enzymes excreted by the invading pathogen are a crucial requirement for the penetration of plant cuticles2>...

Sugarcane is one of the most important agricultural crops in the world. However, pathogen infection and herbivore attack cause constant losses in yield. Plants respond to pathogen infection by inducing the expression of several protein types, such as glucanases, chitinases, thaumatins, peptidase inhibitors, defensins, catalases and glycoproteins. Proteins induced by pathogenesis are directly or...

Pathogens have evolved elaborate mechanisms to invade plant tissues and cause disease. Plants, in turn, respond to pathogen infection by expressing multiple layers of resistance. Once low energy ‘basal’ defences of plant cells have been overcome by pathogens, the plant can employ a more energy costly system of nonself recognition that triggers an ‘acute’ immune response. The survival of plants ...

Upon inoculation with pathogenic microbes, plants induce an array of metabolic changes that potentially contribute to induced resistance or even enhance susceptibility. When analysing leaf lipid composition during the Arabidopsis thaliana-Pseudomonas syringae interaction, we found that accumulation of the phytosterol stigmasterol is a significant plant metabolic process that occurs upon bacteri...

Highly diverse communities of microbial symbionts occupy eukaryotic organisms, including plants. While many well-studied symbionts may be characterized as either parasites or as mutualists, the prevalent but cryptic endophytic fungi are less easily qualified because they do not cause observable symptoms of their presence within their host. Here, we investigate the interactions of an endophytic ...

Plant roots can establish associations with neutral, beneficial and pathogenic groups of soil organisms. Although it has been recognized from the study of individual isolates that these associations are individually important for plant growth, little is known about interactions of whole assemblages of beneficial and pathogenic microorganisms associating with plants.We investigated the influence...

Pseudomonas syringae is a bacterial plant pathogen that can lead to heavy losses in crop production. Th is bacteria is a very good model to study the infection processes, as it can cause disease in Arabidopsis thaliana, a well-studied plant model. Th is text presents an overview of the bacterial pathogenesis from a molecular biology perspective, and explains the role of plant responses in stopp...