开启防御之门: 植物抗病小体

NLR蛋白是存在于植物和动物中的一个免疫受体大家族, 具有核苷酸结合域并富含亮氨酸重复序列。植物NLR通过识别病原菌特异效应子开启免疫信号转导。第1个植物NLR抗性蛋白于25年前克隆, 但其激活机制仍不清楚, 至今仍未获得一个完整的NLR蛋白结构。最近, 柴继杰、周俭民和王宏伟实验室合作解析了第一个植物完整NLR ZAR1激活前后的结构, 研究成果以两篇论文形式发表在“科学”杂志上, 填补了NLR介导的免疫信号转导研究领域的空白。该文简要总结了相关研究进展, 讨论了NLR免疫信号转导研究领域尚需解决的问题。

Open a Door of Defenses: Plant Resistosome

Nucleotide binding, leucine-rich repeat (NLR) immune receptors are a major family of plant resistance (R) proteins, which are also found in animals. NLRs turn on immune signaling by recognizing pathogen-specific effectors in plants. Although the first few plant NLR R genes were cloned more than 25 years ago, the activation mechanism remained elusive. No structure is available for the full-length plant NLRs despite attempts over the last 2 decades. Recently, studies from the Chai, Zhou and Wang labs, published in Science, solved the structure of zygote arrest 1 (ZAR1) before and after effector recognition, which fills a huge gap in NLR biology. This mini review briefly summarized these findings and related progresses, and highlighted further challenges in NLR-mediated immune signaling field.