Fronds. Forest dwellers. Spores. Houseplants. Queer icons. We’ve got ferns. The charming and hilarious professor and author of “Ferns: Lessons in Survival from Earth’s Most Adaptable Plants,” Dr. Fay-...

Toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR) domains are important for immune signaling across humans, plants and bacteria. These domains were recently found to produce immune signaling molecules in plant immuni...

Land plants include angiosperms, gymnosperms, bryophytes, lycophytes, and ferns, each of which may deploy distinct strategies to resist pathogens. Here, we investigate fern-pathogen interactions by characterizing novel pathosystems and analyzing the diversity of fern immune receptors. A collection of fern species was inoculated with a diverse set of filamentous microbes, and disease symptoms were assessed. We further leveraged published genome mining tools to analyse the diversity of receptor-like kinases, receptor-like proteins (RLKs/RLPs) and nucleotide-binding and leucine-rich repeats (NLRs), along with key immune signalling components, in ferns. Our results reveal that ferns exhibit a range of responses to pathogens, including putative non-host resistance and more specific resistance mechanisms. Among ten ferns tested, Pteris vittata displays the broadest spectrum of pathogen compatibility. Genome mining indicates that ferns encode a diverse repertoire of putative immune receptors, antimicrobial peptides, and mediators of systemic acquired resistance. Ferns possess numerous RLKs/RLPs, resembling those required for cell-surface immunity in angiosperms. They also encode diverse NLRs, including sub-families lost in flowering plants. These findings provide insights into disease resistance evolution and open promising perspectives for crop protection strategies.

The success of plants on land has been enabled by mutualistic intracellular associations with microbes for 450 million years ([Delaux and Schornack 2021][1]). Because of their intracellular nature, th...

Abstract. The paradox of evolutionary stasis and dynamism—how morphologically static lineages persist through deep geological periods despite environmental

The literature on domestication commonly calls the association between human domesticators and their plant and animal domesticates mutualistic, yet this designation is rarely examined critically. Here...

Plants deploy a diverse array of pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), which perceive microbe-associated molecular patterns to activate immune responses. Leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinase subgr...

Many plants interact symbiotically with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi to enhance inorganic phosphorus uptake, and legumes also develop a nodule symbiosis with rhizobia for nitrogen acquisition. The establishment and functioning of both symbioses rely on a common plant signaling pathway activated by structurally related Myc and Nod factors. Recently, a SPARK receptor-like kinase (RLK)/receptor-like cytoplasmic kinase (RLCK) complex was shown to be essential for arbuscular mycorrhiza formation in both monocot and dicot plants. Here, we show that in Aeschynomene legumes, the RLCK component of this receptor complex has undergone a gene duplication event and mediates a unique nodule symbiosis that is independent of rhizobial Nod factors. In Aeschynomene evenia, AeRLCK2 is crucial for nodule initiation but not for arbuscular mycorrhiza symbiosis. Additionally, AeRLCK2 physically interacts with and is phosphorylated by the cysteine-rich RLK, AeCRK, which is also required for nodulation. This finding uncovers an important molecular mechanism that controls the establishment of nodulation and is associated with Nod-independent symbiosis.