This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: When cold and flu season comes around, we take steps like getting our flu shots and taking immune supplements to strengthen our bodies' defenses against pathogens. Plants face pathogenic threats, too.
Plant pathogens can have devastating effects on crop yields, with up to 40% of global food crops lost annually, and such losses have severe implications for food security. But what if we could boost plant immune systems as we do our own and make them better able to withstand or fend off biological threats? In a study published in Communications Biology, scientists at the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) explored this concept and found that a previously unrecognized natural compound can provide lasting protection against a broad range of plant pathogens.
The research, investigating a class of nematode pheromones called ascarosides, was led by professor emeritus Dan Klessig and professor Frank Schroeder of BTI, together with former BTI postdoc Dr. Murli Manohar (all three are co-founders of the BTI startup Ascribe Bioscience), and Uwe Conrath, professor at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. "My lab previously showed that nematodes, which are ubiquitous in soil and include many plant and animal parasites, produce these simple glycolipids called ascarosides," explained Schroeder.
"Because ascarosides were so consistently and specifically associated with nematodes, we wondered whether they could be perceived by other organisms as a 'molecular signature' of nematode threat. In particular, we were curious whether ascarosides could affect plant immunity. We showed that, yes, plant immune systems do respond to ascarosides, though initially it wasn't clear what that response was." In the team's earlier studies on nematode-plant interactions, one ascaroside in particular stood out for its ability to activate hallmarks of plant defense responses: ascaroside 18 (ascr#18).
Recognition of ascr#18 granted plants a slightly heightened state of immune vigilance and increased their resistance to bacterial, viral, fungal and nematode pathogens. But it wasn't simply a preemptive immune response. As Klessig explained, "When a plant mounts a full immune response, there's a fitness cost.
It shifts its energy away from growth and development to focus on fighting the pathogen. With ascr#18 treatment, we didn't see that. Ascr#18 doesn't induce a full immune response but instead signals the plants to get ready, so that they can respond to pathogens more quickly and robustly.
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