Microbe articles from across Nature Portfolio

A DNA barcoding approach enables discrimination between bacterial strains that could not be distinguished with conventional microbial marker gene amplicon sequencing techniques.

Upon pathogen attack, plants can trigger the “cry for help” response and assemble beneficial rhizobacteria. Here, the authors use nonpathogenic Pseudomonas syringae DC3000 derivatives to elicit a similar “cry for help” response as the wild-type pathogenic DC3000 in Arabidopsis.

Woo et al. report new autophagy inhibitors identified through a high-throughput chemical screening using a BRET-based assay and an ATG8 synthetic sensor, that function as safe and effective fungicides against broad fungal pathogens.

The authors developed a platform for rapid identification of interacting plant immune receptors and pathogen avirulence proteins by library screening in protoplasts, then used it to identify new wheat stem rust Avr genes recognized by known wheat resistance genes.

Soil organisms are affected by the presence of predatory protists. Here, the authors predatory protists are negatively associated with bacteria wilt disease incidence in tomato plants and that fertilisation enhances the abundance of predatory protists

The plant immune output reactive oxygen species tames a detrimental bacterial commensal from native microbiota by suppressing a bacterial secretion system, allowing the co-existence and turning it into a beneficial bacterium to the host.

Many plants detect bacteria by the receptor FLS2 that binds the flagellin epitope flg22. A new pattern recognition receptor FLS3 in tomato detects flagellin from a second side; a further move in the evolutionary game of ‘hide and seek’ where pathogens evade recognition and hosts evolve novel immunoreceptors to detect them.