Recent studies have revealed an important role for hormones in plant immunity. We are now beginning to understand the contribution of crosstalk among different hormone signaling networks to the outcome of plant-pathogen interactions. Cytokinins are plant hormones that regulate development and responses to the environment. Cytokinin signaling involves a phosphorelay circuitry similar to two-comp...

In breeding for disease resistance, the magnitude of the genetic response is difficult to appreciate because of environmental stresses that interact with the plant genotype. We discuss herein the fundamental problems in breeding for disease resistance with the aim being to better understand the interactions between plant, pathogen, and spatial patterns. The goal of this study is to fine tune br...

An emerging topic in plant biology is whether plants display analogous elements of mammalian programmed cell death during development and defense against pathogen attack. In many plant-pathogen interactions, plant cell death occurs in both susceptible and resistant host responses. For example, specific recognition responses in plants trigger formation of the hypersensitive response and activati...

Oligosaccharide elicitors from pathogens have been shown to play major roles in host plant defense responses involving plant-pathogen chemoperception and interaction. In the present study, chitosan and oligochitosan were prepared from pathogen Fusarium sambucinum, and their effects on infection of Zanthoxylum bungeanum stems were investigated. Results showed that oligochitosan inhibited the inf...

The natural resistance against the majority of potential pathogens that exist in most plant species is known as non-host resistance. Several reports suggest the role of antioxidant enzymes in non-host resistance. We assayed the expression or activity of four scavenging enzymes during non-host pathogen-plant interaction (Xanthomonas hortorum pv. pelargonii/mung bean) and host pathogen-plant inte...

ABSTRACT Plant pathogen culture collections are essential resources in our fight against plant disease and for connecting discoveries of the present with established knowledge of the past. However, available infrastructure in support of culture collections is in serious need of improvement, and we continually face the risk of losing many of these collections. As novel and reemerging plant patho...

Plant diseases caused by fungi, oomycetes, viruses, and bacteria are devastating both to the economy and to the food supply of a nation. Therefore, the development of new, rapid methods to identify these pathogens is a highly important area of research that is of international concern. MS-based proteomics has become a powerful and increasingly popular approach to not only identify these pathoge...

The use of plant protoplast transient expression system has facilitated the discovery and dissection of many signal transduction pathways in response to hormones, metabolites, and stresses. Recently, Arabidopsis protoplasts also have been used successfully to study plant innate immune responses triggered by pathogen-derived elicitors. Here, we describe the detailed protocols for studying innate...

The ubiquitin/26S proteasome pathway is a basic biological mechanism involved in the regulation of a multitude of cellular processes. Increasing evidence indicates that plants utilize the ubiquitin/26S proteasome pathway in their immune response to pathogen invasion, emphasizing the role of this pathway during plant-pathogen interactions. The specific functions of proteasomal degradation in pla...

Fungal and oomycete plant pathogens cause destructive diseases in crops and pose real economic and food security threats [1]. These filamentous, eukaryotic organisms can also upset natural ecosystems when they spread invasively [2]. The capability of plant immune systems to detect and respond to pathogen effector proteins is a major determinant of disease susceptibility. Plant pathogen effector...