Title. Molecular mechanisms of host cell manipulation by plant pathogen effectors
 
Summary. An estimated 15% of global crop production is lost to pre-harvest disease every year. New ways to manage plant diseases are required. A mechanistic understanding of how plant pathogens re-program their hosts to enable colonisation at the molecular level may provide novel genetic or chemical opportunities to interfere with disease. One notorious plant parasite is the Irish potato famine pathogen Phytophthora infestans. This pathogen remains a considerable threat to potato/tomato crops today as the agent of late blight. P. infestans secretes an arsenal of effector proteins outside of and into plant cells to suppress host defences and manipulate cellular physiology. Structural studies of these effectors have provided insights into effector evolution and enabled experiments to probe function, but structures showing how Phytophthora effectors directly interact with host targets are lacking. I will describe our latest studies on the molecular mechanisms of how Phytophthora effectors target host cell pathways of relevance to plant immunity, with a particular insights from biochemical and structural biology approaches.