PhytoPath (www.phytopathdb.org) is a resource for genomic and phenotypic data from plant pathogen species, that integrates phenotypic data for genes from PHI-base, an expertly curated catalog of genes with experimentally verified pathogenicity, with the Ensembl tools for data visualization and analysis. The resource is focused on fungi, protists (oomycetes) and bacterial plant pathogens that ha...

The outcome of infection of individual plants by pathogenic organisms is governed by complex interactions between the host and pathogen. These interactions are the result of long-term co-evolutionary processes involving selection and counterselection between plants and their pathogens. These processes are ongoing, and occur at many spatio-temporal scales, including genes and gene products, cell...

The often-stated truism that most plant species are resistant to most plant pathogens reflects the many observations that a pathogen isolated from one plant species in most cases cannot infect, reproduce, and cause disease on other distantly related species. What determines pathogen host range is an important and intriguing question in fundamental host–pathogen biology. Many studies have invest...

The plant apoplast during plant-pathogen interactions is an ancient battleground that holds an intriguing range of attacking enzymes and counteracting inhibitors. Examples are pathogen xylanases and polygalacturonases that are inhibited by plant proteins like TAXI, XIP, and PGIP; and plant glucanases and proteases, which are targeted by pathogen proteins such as GIP1, EPI1, EPIC2B, and AVR2. Th...

Plant pathogen interaction plays a great role in plant immunity. The regulation of various components of plant pathogen interactions is quite complicated and is very important in establishing relationship among components of this system. Yellow Mosaic Disease is common among legumes such as Vigna mungo. Mungbean Yellow Mosaic India Virus (MYMIV) and whitefly (Bemisia tabaci) is a vector causing...

The hemibiotrophic fungus Zymoseptoria tritici causes Septoria tritici blotch disease of wheat (Triticum aestivum). Pathogen reproduction on wheat occurs without cell penetration, suggesting that dynamic and intimate intercellular communication occurs between fungus and plant throughout the disease cycle. We used deep RNA sequencing and metabolomics to investigate the physiology of plant and pa...

Plants defend themselves against pathogen attack by activating a whole set of defense responses, most of them relying on transcriptional activation of plant defense genes. The same responses are induced by treatment of plant cells with elicitors released from the pathogen or from the plant surface. Several plant/elicitor combinations have been used successfully as experimental systems to invest...

Our previous observation that host plant extracts induce production and secretion of mannitol in the tobacco pathogen Alternaria alternata suggested that, like their animal counterparts, plant pathogenic fungi might produce the reactive oxygen quencher mannitol as a means of suppressing reactive oxygen-mediated plant defenses. The concurrent discovery that pathogen attack induced mannitol dehyd...

Pathogenicity of most Gram-negative plant-pathogenic bacteria depends on the type III secretion (T3S) system, which translocates bacterial effector proteins into plant cells. Type III effectors modulate plant cellular pathways to the benefit of the pathogen and promote bacterial multiplication. One major virulence function of type III effectors is the suppression of plant innate immunity, which...

Plant activators activate systemic acquired resistance-like defense responses or induced systemic resistance, and thus protect plants from pathogens. We screened a chemical library composed of structurally diverse small molecules. We isolated six plant immune-inducing thienopyrimidine-type compounds and their analogous compounds. It was observed that the core structure of thienopyrimidine plays...