PLANT DEFENSE MECHANISM
Like animals , plant also have an effective immune system. The specific interaction between plants and associated biotic and abiotic stress decide whether the plant is susceptible to disease or not. The molecular mechanism related to the occrence of disease is a fasinating field of research among scientists.
Plant is affected with different micro-organisms such as fungi, bacteria , mollicutes , viruses and nematodes. A single plant come in contact with different pathogens during its lifetime.
The plant defend themselves against these pathogen by physical barriers and bio-chemicals. The structural barriers prevent the invasion of the pathogen and disrupt the process of colonization. Some chemicals are also synthesized by the plant which are toxic or lytic to the pathogen.
Beside these natural defense mechanism plant can also induce specific response after the detection of a harmful pathogen.
Plant is affected with different micro-organisms such as fungi, bacteria , mollicutes , viruses and nematodes. A single plant come in contact with different pathogens during its lifetime.
The plant defend themselves against these pathogen by physical barriers and bio-chemicals. The structural barriers prevent the invasion of the pathogen and disrupt the process of colonization. Some chemicals are also synthesized by the plant which are toxic or lytic to the pathogen.
Beside these natural defense mechanism plant can also induce specific response after the detection of a harmful pathogen.
Plant posses two type of immunity :
- The non-specific or horizontal immunity-when a plant recognize harmful signal of presence of a foreign component , a immune responce is initiated which is commen to all pathogen.
- The another type of immunity is R-gene specific or vertical immunity. This one is specific to the race of pathogen and more effective then vertical immunity.
Danger signals are perceived in the form of PAMPs (pattern associated molecular patterns) , MAMPs (membrane associated molecular patterns) , HAMPs (herbivore associated molecular patterns) and an avirulance protein known as elicitor which is directly induced in the host cytoplam.
Both membrane bound and cytoplasmic receptors are there which dignose the occurence of there organism and through sinaling cascade PR genes are activated. The expression of defense gene destroy the pathogen and protect plant from disease.
Many more unknown facts about plant immune mechanism are still left undiscovered. This is important area for research because every year pathogens destroy a huge amount of crop on which the whole population rely.
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