Vamsi J. Nalam

TL;DR: Dehydroabietinal (DA), an abietane diterpenoid, is an activator of systemic acquired resistance (SAR), which is an inducible defense mechanism that is activated in the distal, non-colonized, organs of a plant that has experienced a local foliar infection.

TL;DR: It is shown that increased accumulation of SA in fungus-infected spikes correlated with elevated expression of the SA-inducible pathogenesis-related 1 (PR1) gene and FHB resistance, and that jasmonate signaling has a dichotomous role in wheat interaction with F. graminearum.

TL;DR: Genetic and biochemical experiments indicate that the JA pathway promotes disease by attenuating the activation of SA signaling in fungus-inoculated plants, but the hypersusceptibility of the jar1 npr1 double mutant compared with the nPR1 mutant suggests that JAR1 also contributes to defense, signifying a dichotomous role of JA and a JAR2-dependent mechanism in this interaction.

TL;DR: The progress made on identifying molecular factors and mechanisms that contribute to host defense, including plant resistance genes and signaling components, as well as aphid-derived effectors that elicit or attenuate host defenses are highlighted.

TL;DR: Estimates indicated that the cloning of Br-A2 andBr-A3 using map-based methods would be extremely challenging.