Tuning plant defenses in a changing world.

Abstract

Two recent papers provide new insights into plant immunity. Li et al. identified an evolutionary pattern in which reduced pathogen pressure leads to a convergent reduction of immune receptors. While Guo et al. uncovered recurrent losses of nucleotide-binding site-leucine-rich repeat receptors (NLRs), through intergenomic synteny analysis, revealing the molecular mechanism for immune receptor reduction.