Plant Pathology, Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.
Centro de Biotecnología y Genómica de Plantas (CBGP/Universidad Politécnica de Madrid-Instituto Nacional de Investigación Agraria y Alimentaria/Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (INIA/CSIC), Campus de Montegancedo, Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid) Spain.
PLoS Pathog. 2023 Nov 16;19(11):e1011767. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1011767. eCollection 2023 Nov.
Plants interact with a plethora of pathogenic microorganisms in nature. Pathogen-plant interaction experiments focus mainly on single-strain infections, typically ignoring the complexity of multi-strain infections even though mixed infections are common and critical for the infection outcome. The wheat pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici forms highly diverse fungal populations in which several pathogen strains often colonize the same leaf. Despite the importance of mixed infections, the mechanisms governing interactions between a mixture of pathogen strains within a plant host remain largely unexplored. Here we demonstrate that avirulent pathogen strains benefit from being in mixed infections with virulent strains. We show that virulent strains suppress the wheat immune response, allowing avirulent strains to colonize the apoplast and to reproduce. Our experiments indicate that virulent strains in mixed infections can suppress the plant immune system, probably facilitating the persistence of avirulent pathogen strains in fields planted with resistant host plants.
植物在自然界中与大量的致病微生物相互作用。病原体-植物相互作用实验主要集中在单菌株感染上，通常忽略了多菌株感染的复杂性，尽管混合感染很常见，对感染结果也很关键。小麦病原体小麦叶锈菌在其种群中形成了高度多样化的真菌群体，其中几种病原体菌株通常会定植在同一叶片上。尽管混合感染很重要，但在植物宿主内混合存在的病原体菌株之间的相互作用机制在很大程度上仍未得到探索。在这里，我们证明了无毒病原体菌株从与有毒菌株的混合感染中受益。我们表明，有毒菌株会抑制小麦的免疫反应，从而使无毒菌株定植于质外体并进行繁殖。我们的实验表明，混合感染中的有毒菌株可以抑制植物的免疫系统，这可能有助于在种植抗性宿主植物的田间中维持无毒病原体菌株的存在。
