Molecular Biology and Genomics of Plant-Pathogen Interactions

Dear Colleagues,

Plant pathogens are a major problem for both natural and agricultural systems, resulting in significant economic losses. These pathogens primarily infect plants by recognizing and binding to pathogen receptors on plant cell membranes. Despite this, plants have developed complex defense mechanisms, known as plant immunity, to protect against pathogens such as bacteria, fungi and nematodes. This innate plant immunity is based on identifying pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), which trigger the plant's basal immune responses. These responses include rapid physiological changes such as calcium uptake and the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS). These changes then induce the production of secondary metabolites, including hormones such as salicylic acid (SA), jasmonic acid (JA), ethylene (ET), abscisic acid (ABA) and pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins. When triggered by PAMPs, the response is relatively small but effective against many pathogens.

 In contrast, effector-triggered immunity (ETI) is highly specific and is activated when plants recognize pathogen effectors. This response is much stronger and is often accompanied by a hypersensitive response (HR), leading to cell death at the site of attempted host colonization. Different trophic pathogens use different strategies to attack plant hosts, with phytopathogenic viruses invading plant cells and multiplying in their cytoplasm as biotrophic pathogens.

Plants have evolved intracellular receptors called nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeats (NLRs) to detect these cytoplasmic effectors and activate effector-triggered immunity. The interaction between these effectors and the plant immune network determines the outcome of plant–pathogen interactions. Understanding how pathogens adopt appropriate adaptive mechanisms during plant infection and exploiting the diversity of plant process mechanisms to control resistance/susceptibility to plant diseases will help protect natural and agroforestry ecosystems. This Special Issue aims to collect fascinating contributions that elucidate the complex interactions between plants and pathogens from a molecular biology and genomics perspective.

Dr. Tika Adhikari
Guest Editor

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• plant–pathogen interactions
• effectors
• genomics study
• disease resistance genes
• molecular basis
• immunity network
• genome‐scale network
• pathogenomics
• CRISPR-Cas9
• OMICS