Promoters enter plant–pathogen fray

The evolutionary arms race between plants and pathogens has moved into new territory—gene promoters—according to two new articles. In the first, Sabine Kay, Ulla Bonas (Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle, Germany), and colleagues reveal that a bacterial protein mimics eukaryotic transcription factors. Plants, in turn, coopt that bug protein to activate defensive genes, according to Patrick Römer, Thomas Lahaye, and colleagues (Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle, Germany).

One plant's killer is another's simple nuisance; this difference can be encoded by a single gene. For instance, Xanthomonas strains that inject a protein called AvrBs3 into plant cells cause severe disease in several crop plants. But plants that carry the Bs3 gene resist those particular bugs by actively killing off infected cells before the pathogen spreads too much. The mechanistic...