Intimate Association of PRR- and NLR-Mediated Signaling in Plant Immunity

This article is part of the Top 10 Unanswered Questions in MPMI invited review series.Plants recognize the presence or invasion of microbes through cell surface-localized pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) and intracellular nucleotide-binding domain leucine-rich repeat receptors (NLRs). Although PRRs and NLRs are activated by ligands located in different subcellular compartments through distinct mechanisms, signals initiated from PRRs and NLRs converge into several common signaling pathways with different dynamics. Increasing evidence suggests that PRR- and NLR-mediated signaling extensively crosstalk and such interaction can greatly influence immune response outcomes. Sophisticated experimental setups enabled dissection of the signaling events downstream of PRRs and NLRs with fine temporal and spatial resolution; however, the molecular links underlying the observed interactions in PRR and NLR signaling remain to be elucidated. In this review, we summarize the latest knowledge about activation and signaling mediated by PRRs and NLRs, deconvolute the intimate association between PRR- and NLR-mediated signaling, and propose hypotheses to guide further research on key topics.[Formula: see text] Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.