Fungal pathogens cause disease in plant and animal hosts. The extent to which infection mechanisms are conserved between both classes of hosts is unknown. We present a dual plant-animal infection system based on a single strain of Fusarium oxysporum, the causal agent of vascular wilt disease in plants and an emerging opportunistic human pathogen. Injection of microconidia of a well-characterize...

The rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae, is a model plant pathogenic fungus and is a severe threat to global rice production. Over the past two decades, it has been found that the peroxisomes play indispensable roles during M. oryzae infection. Given the importance of the peroxisomes for virulence, we review recent advances of the peroxisomes roles during M. oryzae infection processes. We fir...

Despite the described central role of jasmonate signaling in plant defense against necrotrophic pathogens, the existence of intraspecific variation in pathogen capacity to activate or evade plant jasmonate-mediated defenses is rarely considered. Experimental infection of jasmonate-deficient and jasmonate-insensitive Arabidopsis thaliana with diverse isolates of the necrotrophic fungal pathogen ...

Biosynthesis of the polyamines putrescine, spermidine, and spermine is induced in response to pathogen infection of plants. Putrescine, which is produced from Arg, serves as a metabolic precursor for longer polyamines, including spermidine and spermine. Polyamine acetylation, which has important regulatory functions in mammalian cells, has been observed in several plant species. Here we show th...

BACKGROUND The rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae elaborates a specialized infection structure called an appressorium to breach the rice leaf surface and gain access to plant tissue. Appressorium development is controlled by cell cycle progression, and a single round of nuclear division occurs prior to appressorium formation. Mitosis is always followed by programmed cell death of the spore fr...

α-1,3-Glucan, a component of the fungal cell wall, is a refractory polysaccharide for most plants. Previously, we showed that various fungal plant pathogens masked their cell wall surfaces with α-1,3-glucan to evade plant immunity. This surface accumulation of α-1,3-glucan was infection specific, suggesting that plant factors might induce its production in fungi. Through immunofluorescence obse...

Fruit-pathogen interactions are a valuable biological system to study the role of plant development in the transition from resistance to susceptibility. In general, unripe fruit are resistant to pathogen infection but become increasingly more susceptible as they ripen. During ripening, fruit undergo significant physiological and biochemical changes that are coordinated by complex regulatory and...

BACKGROUND Caspases are a family of aspartate-specific cysteine proteases that play an essential role in initiating and executing programmed cell death (PCD) in metazoans. Caspase-like activities have been shown to be required for the initiation of PCD in plants, but the genes encoding those activities have not been identified. VPEgamma, a cysteine protease, is induced during senescence, a form...

Although bacterial endosymbioses are common among phloeophagous herbivores, little is known regarding the effects of symbionts on herbivore host selection and population dynamics. We tested the hypothesis that plant selection and reproductive performance by a phloem-feeding herbivore (potato psyllid, Bactericera cockerelli) is mediated by infection of plants with a bacterial endosymbiont. We co...