Publications by authors named "Julia C Meitz"
The genus Pythium is important in agriculture, since it contains many plant pathogenic species, as well as species that can promote plant growth and some that have biocontrol potential. In South Africa, very little is known about the diversity of Pythium species within agricultural soil, irrigation and hydroponic systems. Therefore, the aim of the study was to characterise a selection of 85 Pythium isolates collected in South Africa from 1991 through to 2007.
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- - RPP13 is a highly variable resistance gene in Arabidopsis that interacts with ATR13, a protein from the pathogenic downy mildew, indicating a coevolution between the host and pathogen proteins.
- - ATR13 has five distinct functional domains, and while the RXLR motif is important for transport into plant cells, it isn't necessary for recognition by RPP13.
- - Research identified key amino acids in ATR13's structure that are crucial for recognition by RPP13, specifically a required threonine residue and modulating roles for arginine and glutamic acid in recognition specificity.
Plants are constantly exposed to attack by an array of diverse pathogens but lack a somatically adaptive immune system. In spite of this, natural plant populations do not often suffer destructive disease epidemics. Elucidating how allelic diversity within plant genes that function to detect pathogens (resistance genes) counteracts changing structures of pathogen genes required for host invasion (pathogenicity effectors) is critical to our understanding of the dynamics of natural plant populations.
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