Washington, June 29 (IANS) Researchers have identified a group of plant proteins that “shut the door” on bacteria that infect plants.
Plants are continuously exposed to bacteria, viruses and other micro-organisms, many of which have the ability to infect the plant and cause disease.

Their findings provide a better understanding of plants’ immune systems, opening the way to better protection of crops and horticultural plants against diseases.

“The ability of a plant’s immune system to recognise disease-causing micro-organisms is critical to the plant’s survival and productivity,” said Gitta Coaker, University of California-Davis (UC-D) plant pathologist and study co-author.

“We identified a complex of proteins in the common research plant Arabidopsis that appear to play important roles in the biochemical mechanisms that enable plants to recognise and block out invading bacteria,” Coaker said.

“Our ability to purify an immune protein complex will serve as a starting point to understand how these proteins signal in the plant,” Coaker said, according to an UC-D release.

These findings appeared in the Monday online edition of the Public Library of Science Biology.