Plant immunity articles from across Nature Portfolio

Asian soybean rust (ASR) is a devastating disease of soybean. Here, the author report the identification of an atypical pair of nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) encoding genes and how they function together to confer broad-spectrum resistance to ASR.

Plant ubiquitin regulatory domain-containing proteins (PUX) play vital roles in CDC48-mediated protein quality control processes. Here Shi et al. show that a conserved core Magnaporthe oryzae effector (MoNLE1) can specially target the rice PUX protein OsPUX8B.2 and interfere with host immune responses.

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

Plants regulate their microbiota to cope with diverse stresses. A recent study shows that rice maintains homeostasis of its phyllosphere microbiome through a secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene, which offers potential for harnessing microbiome-shaping genes in disease-resistance breeding.

Genetic improvement of disease resistance in crops often incurs a yield penalty. We identified the ERAD-related ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme OsUBC45 as a positive regulator of rice resistance against multiple pathogens while also improving yield. The underlying mechanism involves OsUBC45 facilitating ubiquitination-mediated degradation of negative regulators of rice yield and immunity.

The destructive panicle disease rice false smut is caused by the biotrophic fungus Ustilaginoidea virens. Disease-suppressive microorganisms present in rice panicles have now been found to mediate fungal resistance by modulating the metabolism of the host plant.