Yet uninfected? Resolving cell states of plants under pathogen attack

Abstract

Although we have made significant strides in unraveling plant responses to pathogen attacks at the tissue or major cell type scale, a comprehensive understanding of individual cell responses still needs to be achieved. Addressing this gap, Zhu et al. employed single-cell transcriptome analysis to unveil the heterogeneous responses of plant cells when confronted with bacterial pathogens.

Figure 1

Resolving plant-pathogen interactions at the single-cell and spatial resolution (A) Schematic diagrams of the spatial expression patterns of immune and susceptible markers in a plant leaf at different stages of infection by a bacterial pathogen. The immune marker FRK1 (red) is induced locally at an early stage of infection, whereas the susceptible markers PIP1;4 and EXPA10 (blue) are induced broadly at a later stage of infection. (B) Single-cell and spatial omics technologies can address important future topics in plant-pathogen interactions. TF, transcription factor; CRE, cis-regulatory element.