Understanding and exploiting late blight resistance in the age of effectors

VLEESHOUWERS, V.G.A.A.; RAFFAELE, S.; VOSSEN, J.H.; CHAMPOURET, N.; OLIVA, R.; SEGRETIN, M.E.; RIETMAN, H.; CANO, L.M.; LOKOSSOU, A.; KESSEL, G.; PEL, M.A.; KAMOUN, S.

ANNUAL REVIEW OF PHYTOPATHOLOGY

ANNUAL REVIEWS

Lugar: Palo Alto, California; Año: 2011 vol. 49 p. 507 - 531

0066-4286

Potato (Solanum tuberosum) is the world's third-largest food crop. It severely suffers from late blight, a devastating disease caused by Phytophthora infestans. This oomycete pathogen secretes host-translocated RXLR effectors that include avirulence (AVR) proteins, which are targeted by resistance (R) proteins from wild Solanum species. Most Solanum R genes appear to have coevolved with P. infestans at its center of origin in central Mexico. Various R and Avr genes were recently cloned, and here we catalog characterized R-AVR pairs. We describe the mechanisms that P. infestans employs for evading R protein recognition and discuss partial resistance and partial virulence phenotypes in the context of our knowledge of effector diversity and activity. Genome-wide catalogs of P. infestans effectors are available, enabling effectoromics approaches that accelerate R gene cloning and specificity profiling. Engineering R genes with expanded pathogen recognition has also become possible. Importantly, monitoring effector allelic diversity in pathogen populations can assist in R gene deployment in agriculture.