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Disease resistance: Not so costly after all

Nature Plants volume 2, Article number: 16121 (2016) Cite this article

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The fitness costs of individual resistance (R) genes detected in previous studies suggest an impossibly high genetic load associated with disease resistance, if true for all R genes. However, new research shows that Arabidopsis plants with resistant Rps2 are no less fit than those with a susceptible Rps2 allele in the absence of disease.

To date, the empirical evidence supporting fitness costs has remained mixed. It is notoriously difficult to accurately measure and verify the existence of small fitness costs associated with disease resistance. As pointed out previously7, large numbers of replicates must be used to estimate costs in the order of 1–2% even in a single environment. The problem becomes even more complex if the magnitude and direction of fitness costs are mediated by environmental conditions. Assigning a fitness cost to a single gene may also be complicated by linkage between the target gene and other genes8. Towards this end, transgenic approaches are increasingly enabling us to understand effects associated with single genes.

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Figure 1: Red Queen dynamics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biosciences, Anna-Liisa Laine is at the Centre of Excellence in Metapopulation Research, Plant Biology, University of Helsinki FI-00014, Finland.,

    Anna-Liisa Laine

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  1. Anna-Liisa Laine
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Correspondence to Anna-Liisa Laine.

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Laine, AL. Disease resistance: Not so costly after all. Nature Plants 2, 16121 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2016.121

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2016.121

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