Protecting plants from stealthy diseases
Monday, November 2, 2015 - 22:00
in Biology & Nature
Stealthy diseases sometimes trick plants by hijacking their defense signaling system, which issues an alarm that diverts plant resources for the wrong attack and allows the enemy pathogens to easily overrun plants. A team of international scientists, however, has engineered the receptor for jasmonate, a plant hormone that plays a central role in plant defense, to fend off such stealthy attacks from highly evolved pathogens.