Pathogens hijack alternative splicing to rewire plant immunity: OsRBP11/OsNPR3 uncovered as a new vulnerability in rice.

In the intricate molecular warfare between plants and pathogens, bacteria deploy sophisticated strategies to subvert host defenses. Xanthomonas oryzae pathogens, which cause devastating bacterial blight (BB) and bacterial leaf streak (BLS) in rice, utilize transcription activator-like effectors (TALEs) to manipulate host gene expression. Secreted by the type III secretion system and translocated by the type III translocon into host cells, TALEs directly bind specific DNA sequences (effector-binding elements, EBEs) in the 5'-terminal untranslated regions (UTRs) or within the promoter regions of host genes to activate transcription of these genes, including SWEETs sugar transporters and negative regulators of plant immunity (Xue et al., 2021). Identifying novel target genes of TALEs will advance our understanding of plant-pathogen co-evolution.