Molecular Plant– Microbe Interactions

Abstract

Recent developments in molecular biology and in the burgeoning omics have brought about a great deal of new data in all areas of plant sciences. However, the use of these data towards their exploitation into higher performance plants has proved to be a slow process. For example, although producing genomics and proteomics data has become routine in a large number of laboratories around the world, functional genomics studies to understand the meaning of the accumulating data still lag behind. Carrying out these studies in such important areas as plant development, photosynthesis or plant responses to abiotic stress, bounces within a large window of complexity and difficulty levels. These levels escalate when more than one organism is involved, in either a mutually beneficial or an antagonistic interaction with the plant. However, navigating through such a network of interactions makes the journey more exciting, at least from the view of a plant pathologist. Studying molecular plant–microbe interactions is very stimulating indeed. There is no guarantee that a microbe, even from the same species or race within it, would act exactly the same way in its coevolution with the host plant. The same applies to the plant regarding ‘upgrading’ its arsenal to fight external threats. This creates a certain dynamism that fuels new discoveries, and which scientists in the molecular plant–microbe interactions field value so much. In such a dynamic discipline, it is useful to revisit the field more often than, say, every 20 years. In this volume, authors of world repute in different aspects of molecular plant–microbe interactions have agreed to contribute a chapter about their research and their views on the current developments in the fields of plant defences, pathogen counter-defences and mutually beneficial plant– microbe interactions. This book explores recent discoveries in the area of molecular plant– microbe interactions. It focuses mainly on the mechanisms controlling plant disease resistance and the cross talk among the signalling pathways involved, and the strategies used by fungi and viruses to suppress these defences