Parasitic worms hijack key plant protein to build their nest

Abstract

Parasitic nematode worms infect a variety of crop plants worldwide. Roots infected by these worms start to look rather unsavory – with knot like tumors (galls) developing all over them. At the core of each gall, a worm matures and lays its eggs. Olmo et al. (2018) looked into the developmental reprogramming that leads to gall formation and found an Arabidopsis protein to be a necessary component in this process.