Metabolism of the cutin and wax of plants and their disease resistance mechanisms

Abstract

As a type of secondary metabolites produced by plants during long-term ecological adaptation, cutin and wax are widely involved in many resistance physiological processes including stress defense and resistance to pests and diseases, playing critical roles in the plant-pathogen interaction, thus becoming an important part of plant disease resistance mechanism. With the development of molecular biology, there is an increasing understanding on the cutin and wax metabolism and their mechanisms against fungal disease in plant. With prior researches mainly focused on the constitutive resistance and inducible resistance of plant cutin and wax, the present study, with a review of the research progress achieved on the plant cutin and wax biosynthesis and its disease resistance mechanism, is aimed to put forward prospects for future research. It was concluded that (1) as the main components of the cuticle, the first line of defense for plants against pathogen infection, cutin and wax play a critical role in physical resistance (physical barrier) and chemical resistance (bacteriostasis) as constitutive resistance components, (2) They can also play the role of inducible resistance components and (3) in addition to being the main component of the cuticle to exert physical resistance, the inducible cutin and wax component can also act as a signal molecule or inducer to activate downstream resistance reactions and exert its chemical resistance function. In the future, the research concerning cutin and wax can be focused on an in-depth explanation of the mechanism of cutin and wax inducible resistance, so as to further enrich the theoretical system of plant chemical ecology. In addition, cutin and wax biopesticides (plant immunity inducers) can be developed based on the inducible resistance of cutin and wax to provide new insight for the plant diseases control. [Ch, 1 fig. 71 ref.]