PLANT DEFENCE AGAINST INTRACELLULAR BACTERIA

Plants have a robust defence system to fight off infections from various pathogenic microorganisms. This includes surface-exposed and intracellular immune receptors that detects conserved, or unique, microbial determinants and transmits a cascade of signals to induce a defence reaction (see image from Dodds and Rathjen 2010_Nat.Rev. Gen.). Nevertheless, how plants defend themselves against intracellular bacteria is not well understood. As a matter of fact, although there are tens of immune receptors known to detect other types of pathogenic microorganisms (e.g. fungi, bacteria, viruses) there are none known to detect intracellular bacteria! How could that be??? aren’t there any? or did we just have not find them yet? THIS, is one interesting question we are looking into…