Abstract
Some of the proteins and enzymes that allow bacteria to enter living fungal cells and cause rice seedling blight have been identified.
Highlights
In eLife, Christian Hertweck and co-workers—including Nadine Moebius and Zerrin Üzüm as joint first authors—shed light on the symbiosis between the fungus and bacterium that are responsible for causing rice seedling blight, a severe plant disease that is prevalent in Asia (Moebius et al, 2014)
How does the fungus recognize the bacteria? And how do the bacteria pass through the cell wall that surrounds the fungus? This wall is very tough because it is made of a polymer called chitin and various other molecules
The results presented by Moebius, Üzüm and colleagues—who are based at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology, the CBS-KNAW Fungal Biodiversity Centre and Friedrich Schiller University—suggest that entry of B. rhizoxinica into R. microsporus is assisted by enzymes that break down the fungal cell wall
Summary
Image Snapshot of bacteria entering a fungal cell In eLife, Christian Hertweck and co-workers—including Nadine Moebius and Zerrin Üzüm as joint first authors—shed light on the symbiosis between the fungus and bacterium that are responsible for causing rice seedling blight, a severe plant disease that is prevalent in Asia (Moebius et al, 2014). When the fungus, called Rhizopus microsporus, infects rice plants it produces a toxin that can prevent the rice cells from dividing.
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