Caterpillar-specific defense responses in plants

农作物提供食物、牧草和/或生物燃料，并可能作为碳汇帮助减少温室气体排放。值得注意的是，无根植物受到各种各样的害虫和疾病的侵害，但它们设法避开了大多数这些攻击。然而，当植物容易受到害虫或病原体的影响时，这可能会导致数十亿美元的损失。了解植物如何在转录、蛋白质和代谢物水平上协调和调节它们的防御反应是通过育种或代谢工程制定有效的植物保护策略的关键，这将导致可持续的农业实践。全球细胞主调控因子协调多种途径，参与控制植物内源防御反应，为了解植物细胞调控提供了很好的机会，并为改善植物保护提供了工具。

Agricultural crops provide food, forages and/or biofuels and may help to mitigate greenhouse gasses by acting as carbon sinks. Remarkably, sessile plants are subject to an vast and diverse arsenal of pests and diseases but manage to circumvent most of these onslaughts. However, when a plant is susceptible to a pest or pathogen, this can result in billions of dollars in damage. Understanding how plants co-ordinate and regulate their defense responses at the transcriptional, protein and metabolite levels is key to developing effective plant protection strategies, through breeding or metabolic engineering, that will lead to sustainable agricultural practices. Global cellular master regulators, which co-ordinate multiple pathways and are involved in controlling the endogenous plant defense response, provide a great opportunity to understand plant cellular regulation and provide tools to improve plant protection.