Meddling with the microbiota: Fungal tricks to infect plant hosts

Abstract

Plants associate with a wealth of microbes, collectively referred to as the plant microbiota, whose composition is determined by host plant genetics, immune responses, environmental factors and intermicrobial relations. Unsurprisingly, microbiota compositions change during disease development. Recent evidence revealed that some of these changes can be attributed to effector proteins with antimicrobial activities that are secreted by plant pathogens to manipulate host microbiota to their advantage. Intriguingly, many of these effectors have ancient origins, predating land plant emergence, and evolved over long evolutionary trajectories to acquire selective antimicrobial activities to target microbial antagonists in host plant microbiota. Thus, we argue that host-pathogen co-evolution likely involved arms races within the host-associated microbiota.