Dissecting the molecular plant-pathogen interface using type III effector proteins

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As the global population continues to rise, bringing with it an increased demand for food, it will be crucial to engineer pest-resistant crops or develop robust, environmentally friendly disease control strategies to answer this demand effectively. The development of these disease control strategies requires extensive knowledge of host immune systems as well pathogen virulence strategies. Importantly, these two systems are interdependent and have shaped each other’s evolutionary trajectory in a perpetual host-pathogen “arms race”. At the molecular level, the interface between pathogen virulence factors and host proteins is where this arms race is played out. As such, this interface represents a unique opportunity to investigate both the mechanisms of pathogen virulence as well as host resistance, and also to provide insights into the evolutionary pressures shaping these interactions. However, the molecular details of these interactions are limited and represent a major challenge of current studies in host-microbe interactions.