A new study identifies the mechanism used by several types of common, virulent microbes to infect plants and cause devastating blights. Microbes using this infection mechanism include fungi that are currently causing wheat rust epidemics in Africa and Asia, and a class of parasitic algae, called oomycetes, that resulted in the Irish potato blight of the 19th Century. These microbes remain an agricultural scourge today.
"Our findings suggest broad new strategies for combating the most damaging diseases of the world's major food crops, including wheat, rice, maize and potatoes, as well as several nasty human diseases," said Brett Tyler of the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Va.--the leader of the study.
