Abstract
Phytopathogenic bacteria inject effector proteins into plant host cells to promote disease. Plant resistance (R) genes encoding nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins mediate the recognition of functionally and structurally diverse microbial effectors, including transcription-activator like effectors (TALEs) from the bacterial genus Xanthomonas. TALEs bind to plant promoters and transcriptionally activate either disease-promoting host susceptibility (S) genes or cell death-inducing executor-type R genes. It is perplexing that plants contain TALE-perceiving executor-type R genes in addition to NLRs that also mediate the recognition of TALE-containing xanthomonads. We present recent findings on the evolvability of TALEs, which suggest that the native function of executors is not in plant immunity, but possibly in the regulation of developmentally controlled programmed cell death (PCD) processes.
Highlights
Phytopathogenic bacteria inject effector proteins into plant host cells to promote disease
We review evidence suggesting that executor R genes have been mistakenly interpreted solely as components of the plant immune system, while their native function possibly lies in the execution of programmed cell death (PCD) as an integral part of developmental processes
Designer transcription-activator like effectors (TALEs): in vitroassembled gene encoding a TALE that binds to a user-defined DNA target sequence. designer TALEs (dTALEs) repeat arrays typically contain only repeat variable diresidue (RVD) with high base specificity to avoid off targets
Summary
Phytopathogenic bacteria inject effector proteins into plant host cells to promote disease. Plant resistance (R) genes encoding nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins mediate the recognition of functionally and structurally diverse microbial effectors, including transcription-activator like effectors (TALEs) from the bacterial genus Xanthomonas. TALEs bind to plant promoters and transcriptionally activate either disease-promoting host susceptibility (S) genes or cell death-inducing executor-type R genes. We present recent findings on the evolvability of TALEs, which suggest that the native function of executors is not in plant immunity, but possibly in the regulation of developmentally controlled programmed cell death (PCD) processes. Recent studies uncovered that native TALE DNA binding domains are highly evolvable and capable of rapidly adjusting their target specificity to either induce the expression of disease-promoting plant S genes or avoid the transcriptional activation of matching R genes [4,5].
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