Mechanisms to Mitigate the Trade-Off between Growth and Defense.
Plants have evolved an array of defenses against pathogens. However, mounting a defense response frequently comes with the cost of a reduction in growth and reproduction, carrying critical implications for natural and agricultural populations. This review focuses on how costs are generated and whether and how they can be mitigated. Most well-characterized growth-defense trade-offs stem from antagonistic crosstalk among hormones rather than an identified metabolic expenditure. A primary way plants mitigate such costs is through restricted expression of resistance; this can be achieved through inducible expression of defense genes or by the concentration of defense to particular times or tissues. Defense pathways can be primed for more effective induction, and primed states can be transmitted to offspring. We examine the resistance (R) genes as a case study of how the toll of defense can be generated and ameliorated. The fine-scale regulation ofRgenes is critical to alleviate the burden of their expression, and the genomic organization ofRgenes into coregulatory modules reduces costs. Plants can also recruit protection from other species. Exciting new evidence indicates that a plant's genotype influences the microbiome composition, lending credence to the hypothesis that plants shape their microbiome to enhance defense.
Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen 72076, Germany.
Talia L
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3592-6597
TL
Karasov
Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen 72076, Germany.
Eunyoung
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0889-9837
E
Chae
Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637.
Jacob J
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7391-8096
JJ
Herman
Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637 jbergels@uchicago.edu.
Joy
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7893-7387
J
Bergelson
D060467:Disease Resistance / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology; D057865:Plant Immunity / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D010944:Plants / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism*
D010940:Plant Proteins