Mycorrhizal effector PaMiSSP10b alters polyamine biosynthesis in Eucalyptus root cells and promotes root colonization

What is it about?

Previously, only one evolutionary lineage of mutualistic ectomycorrhizal fungi has been proven to manipulate their plant hosts to achieve colonization by using protein signals called ‘effectors’. Plett et al. now mechanistically demonstrate this is likely to be a general mechanism used by ectomycorrhizal fungi during host colonization by demonstrating that another lineage of ectomycorrhizal fungus also encodes an active effector protein, the first mutualistic such example found to modify the activity of an enzyme.

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