Plant-pathogen interactions: toward development of next-generation disease-resistant plants

Briskly evolving phytopathogens are dire threats to our food supplies and threaten global food security. From the recent advances made toward high-throughput sequencing technologies, understanding of pathogenesis and effector biology, and plant innate immunity, translation of these means into new control tools is being introduced to develop durable disease resistance. Effectoromics as a powerful genetic tool for uncovering effector-target genes, both susceptibility genes and executor resistance genes in effector-assisted breeding, open up new avenues to improve resistance. TALENs (Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases), engineered nucleases and CRISPR (Clustered Regulatory Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats)/Cas9 systems are breakthrough and powerful techniques for genome editing, providing efficient mechanisms for targeted crop protection strategies in disease resistance programs. In this review, major advances in plant disease management to confer durable disease resistance and novel strategies for boosting plant innate immunity are highlighted.

Cord blood monocyte-derived inflammatory cytokines suppress IL-2 and induce nonclassic "T(H)2-type" immunity associated with development of food allergy

Food allergy is a major health burden in early childhood. Infants who develop food allergy display a proinflammatory immune profile in cord blood, but how this is related to interleukin-4 (IL-4)/T helper 2 (T(H)2)-type immunity characteristic of allergy is unknown. In a general population-derived birth cohort, we found that in infants who developed food allergy, cord blood displayed a higher monocyte to CD4(+) T cell ratio and a lower proportion of natural regulatory T cell (nT(reg)) in relation to duration of labor. CD14(+) monocytes of food-allergic infants secreted higher amounts of inflammatory cytokines (IL-1β, IL-6, and tumor necrosis factor-α) in response to lipopolysaccharide. In the presence of the mucosal cytokine transforming growth factor-β, these inflammatory cytokines suppressed IL-2 expression by CD4(+) T cells. In the absence of IL-2, inflammatory cytokines decreased the number of activated nT(reg) and diverted the differentiation of both nT(reg) and naïve CD4(+) T cells toward an IL-4-expressing nonclassical TH2 phenotype. These findings provide a mechanistic explanation for susceptibility to food allergy in infants and suggest anti-inflammatory approaches to its prevention.

A Transcriptome Atlas of Physcomitrella patens Provides Insights into the Evolution and Development of Land Plants

Post-print version of the article.

Meeting report from the fourth meeting of the Computational Modeling in Biology Network (COMBINE)

This report summarizes the topics and activities of the fourth edition of the annual COMBINE meeting, held in Paris during September 16-20 2013,