12 August 2025
Anil Kumar, Jin-Peng Gao, Jeremy D Murray - Molecular Plant, 2025
Plants have both fought and cooperated with microbes for as long as they have existed, so their ability to distinguish friends from foes is an important evolutionary adaptation (Delaux and Schornack, 2021). The soil microbiome includes both pathogens and mutualistic symbiotic partners like rhizobia and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMFs). How do plants fine-tune their molecular responses to accommodate beneficial microbes while defending against invaders? Three recent publications have begun to unravel this complex puzzle (Zhang et al., 2024; Tan et al., 2025; Wang et al., 2025). Collectively, these studies present a molecular framework involving the lysin-motif-receptor-like kinases (LysM-RLKs) and cytoplasmic kinases that allow plants to precisely decode microbial messages (Figure 1).
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