The kingdom Stramenopile includes diatoms, brown algae, and oomycetes. Plant pathogenic oomycetes, including Phytophthora, Pythium and downy mildew species, cause devastating diseases on a wide range of host species and have a significant impact on agriculture. Here, we report comparative analyses on the genomes of thirteen straminipilous species, including eleven plant pathogenic oomycetes, to...

Effectors are molecules used by microbial pathogens to facilitate infection via effector-triggered susceptibility or tissue necrosis in their host. Much research has been focussed on the identification and elucidating the function of fungal effectors during plant pathogenesis. By comparison, knowledge of how phytopathogenic fungi regulate the expression of effector genes has been lagging. Sever...

Endophytic fungi are found within the roots of healthy plants, but their function is poorly understood. In this issue, Hiruma et al. demonstrate that, under phosphate-limiting conditions, the endophytic fungus, Colletotrichum tofieldiae, provides growth-promoting and fitness benefits to Arabidopsis, but the plant must restrict fungal growth or risk pathogenesis.

Phytohormone salicylic acid (SA) is a crucial component of plant-induced defense against biotrophic pathogens. Although the key players of the SA pathway are known, there are still gaps in the understanding of the molecular mechanism and the regulation of particular steps. In our previous research, we showed in Arabidopsis suspension cells that n-butanol, which specifically modulates phospholip...

Pathogenesis-related proteins played a pioneering role 50 years ago in the discovery of plant innate immunity as a set of proteins that accumulated upon pathogen challenge. The most abundant of these proteins, PATHOGENESIS-RELATED 1 (PR-1) encodes a small antimicrobial protein that has become, as a marker of plant immune signaling, one of the most referred to plant proteins. The biochemical act...

Sugarcane is one of the most important agricultural crops in the world. However, pathogen infection and herbivore attack cause constant losses in yield. Plants respond to pathogen infection by inducing the expression of several protein types, such as glucanases, chitinases, thaumatins, peptidase inhibitors, defensins, catalases and glycoproteins. Proteins induced by pathogenesis are directly or...

Molecular studies focusing on the interface between microbes and plant hosts have provided major insights into the basis underlying pathogenesis, symbiosis and plant defence and resistance mechanisms. A more recent focus on microbes, facilitated by the generation of complete genome sequences, has uncovered the sheer number of protein effectors microbes deliver in this interface as well as insid...

The human glioma pathogenesis-related protein (GliPR) is highly expressed in the brain tumor glioblastoma multiforme and exhibits 35% amino acid sequence identity with the tomato pathogenesis-related (PR) protein P14a, which has an important role for the plant defense system. A molecular model of GliPR was computed with the distance geometry program DIANA on the basis of a P14a-GliPR sequence a...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW Oxidative damage is involved in cardiovascular diseases. Intervention with alpha-tocopherol, ascorbic acid and beta-carotene does not appear to reduce pathogenesis. The purpose of this review is to describe alternative antioxidant mechanisms that may be involved. RECENT FINDINGS Antioxidants with different chemical properties may recharge each other in an antioxidant network...

In the dicotyledonous plant species Arabidopsis and the monocot barley, presence of specific isoforms of the family of heptahelical plasma membrane-localized MLO proteins is required for successful host-cell invasion by ascomycete powdery mildew fungi. Absence of these MLO proteins, either caused by natural polymorphisms or induced lesions in the respective Mlo genes, results in failure of fung...