Fungal effectors: past, present, and future.

Fungal effector proteins function at the interfaces of diverse interactions between fungi and their plant and animal hosts, facilitating interactions that are pathogenic or mutualistic. Recent advancements in protein structure prediction have significantly accelerated the identification and functional predictions of these rapidly evolving effector proteins. This development enables scientists to generate testable hypotheses for functional validation using experimental approaches.

Differential Colonization of the Plant Vasculature Between Endophytic Versus Pathogenic Strains.

Plant xylem colonization is the hallmark of vascular wilt diseases caused by phytopathogens within the species complex. Recently, xylem colonization has also been reported among endophytic strains, resulting in some uncertainty. This study compares xylem colonization processes by pathogenic versus endophytic strains in and , using pathogen Fo5176, tomato pathogen Fol4287, and the endophyte Fo47, which can colonize both plant hosts.

A De Novo-Assembly Based Data Analysis Pipeline for Plant Obligate Parasite Metatranscriptomic Studies.

Current and emerging plant diseases caused by obligate parasitic microbes such as rusts, downy mildews, and powdery mildews threaten worldwide crop production and food safety. These obligate parasites are typically unculturable in the laboratory, posing technical challenges to characterize them at the genetic and genomic level. Here we have developed a data analysis pipeline integrating several bioinformatic software programs.