Plant Disease and Defence

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 depends on their ability to fine-tune defence responses to the type of pathogen they encounter.