%A ZHAO Kai-Jun, LI Yan-Qiang, WANG Chun-Lian, GAO Ying %T Recent Findings in Plant Innate Immunity and Possible Impacts on Crop Disease-resistance Breeding %0 Journal Article %D 2011 %J Acta Agronomica Sinica %R 10.3724/SP.J.1006.2011.00935 %P 935-942 %V 37 %N 06 %U {https://zwxb.chinacrops.org/CN/abstract/article_4832.shtml} %8 2011-06-12 %X Plants have been successfully living in such an environment in which there are myriads of potential microbial pathogens, indicating that plants possess an efficient immunity system. Recent studies have revealed that the plant immunity system consists of two layers of defense. The first layer, based on the sensitive perception of pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) through pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) at the plant cell surface, is named as PAMP-triggered immunity (PTI). The second is called effector-triggered immunity (ETI), in which plants use additional receptors (such as R-gene products) to perceive pathogen virulence effectors that have evolved to suppress PTI. The conventional gene-for-gene resistance in plants belongs actually to ETI. For millions of years, natural selection has been driving pathogens to avoid ETI either by diversifying the recognized effectors or by acquiring additional effectors that suppress ETI. On the other hand, natural selection favors plant new R-genes that can recognize the newly acquired effectors in pathogen, resulting in new ETI to be triggered again. The latest studies have revealed the simple cipher that governs DNA recognition by TAL (transcription activator-like) effectors from plant pathogenic Xanthomonas. TAL effectors can specifically bind the target DNA of host plant with a novel protein-DNA binding pattern in which two amino acids recognize one nucleotide. Using this recognition code, TAL effectors can bind the promoter of target genes and induce the host diseases or resistance responses. Recent findings about plant innate immunity are reviewed in this paper and their possible applications in plant breeding for disease resistance are discussed.