Molecular pathogen recognition

Plants and their pathogens are involed in a never-ending, struggle . Pathogen challengings is often based on secretion of large arrays of virulence factors that target molecules inside or outside plant cells and thereby act as molecular saboteurs (Chang et al., 2004). The array of virulence factors deployed by pathogens can be quite variable, even between different strains of the same pathogen species (Greenberg and Vinatzer, 2003). For their part, plants have evolved molecular surveillance systems plants express pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) that provide for recognition of many different types of pathogen-encoded molecules. (Figure 1 by Postel and Kemmerling 2009).

Jeff H Chang, Ajay K Goel, Sarah R Grant, Jeffery L Dangl
Wake of the flood: ascribing functions to the wave of type III effector proteins of phytopathogenic bacteria.
Curr. Opin. Microbiol.: 2004, 7(1);11-8
PubMed:15036134 WorldCat.org DOI (P p)