Edu Molecular Mechanisms of Host-Pathogen Interactions Introduction Higher plants are susceptible to diseases caused by a wide variety of viral, bacterial, fungal, and nematode species.
Plants also can participate in a number of benign or beneficial interactions with microbes.
Thus a central concept in plant pathology is that plants have evolved mechanisms for selectively recognizing and responding to pathogens. My research program focuses in part on the molecular mechanisms underlying the recognition of pathogens by plants. In susceptible plants, some aspect of this sequence fails and a compatible relationship is established. Resistance genes are thought to participate in steps 2 and 3, the recognition of pathogens and the activation of defense responses. In some cases, recognition can be very specific with a given resistance allele conferring resistance to a specific pathogen race.