Plants can be colonized by fungi that have adopted highly diverse lifestyles, ranging from symbiotic to necrotrophic. Colonization is governed in all systems by hundreds of secreted fungal effector molecules. These effectors suppress plant defense responses and modulate plant physiology to accommodate fungal invaders and provide them with nutrients. Fungal effectors either function in the interaction zone between the fungal hyphae and host or are transferred to plant cells. This review describes the effector repertoires of 84 plant-colonizing fungi. We focus on the mechanisms that allow these fungal effectors to promote virulence or compatibility, discuss common plant nodes that are targeted by effectors, and provide recent insights into effector evolution. In addition, we address the issue of effector uptake in plant cells and highlight open questions and future challenges.

The biotrophic fungus Ustilago maydis causes smut disease in maize with characteristic tumor formation and anthocyanin induction. Here, we show that anthocyanin biosynthesis is induced by the virulence promoting secreted effector protein Tin2. Tin2 protein functions inside plant cells where it interacts with maize protein kinase ZmTTK1. Tin2 masks a ubiquitin–proteasome degradation motif in ZmTTK1, thus stabilizing the active kinase. Active ZmTTK1 controls activation of genes in the anthocyanin biosynthesis pathway. Without Tin2, enhanced lignin biosynthesis is observed in infected tissue and vascular bundles show strong lignification. This is presumably limiting access of fungal hyphae to nutrients needed for massive proliferation. Consistent with this assertion, we observe that maize brown midrib mutants affected in lignin biosynthesis are hypersensitive to U. maydis infection. We speculate that Tin2 rewires metabolites into the anthocyanin pathway to lower their availability for other defense responses.

In the genome of the biotrophic plant pathogen Ustilago maydis, many of the genes coding for secreted protein effectors modulating virulence are arranged in gene clusters. The vast majority of these genes encode novel proteins whose expression is coupled to plant colonization. The largest of these gene clusters, cluster 19A, encodes 24 secreted effectors. Deletion of the entire cluster results in severe attenuation of virulence. Here we present the functional analysis of this genomic region. We show that a 19A deletion mutant behaves like an endophyte, i.e. is still able to colonize plants and complete the infection cycle. However, tumors, the most conspicuous symptoms of maize smut disease, are only rarely formed and fungal biomass in infected tissue is significantly reduced. The generation and analysis of strains carrying sub-deletions identified several genes significantly contributing to tumor formation after seedling infection. Another of the effectors could be linked specifically to anthocyanin induction in the infected tissue. As the individual contributions of these genes to tumor formation were small, we studied the response of maize plants to the whole cluster mutant as well as to several individual mutants by array analysis. This revealed distinct plant responses, demonstrating that the respective effectors have discrete plant targets. We propose that the analysis of plant responses to effector mutant strains that lack a strong virulence phenotype may be a general way to visualize differences in effector function. In this study, we provide the first step to the functional analysis of the largest gene cluster in the Ustilago maydis genome encoding 24 secreted effectors. While the deletion of the entire cluster dramatically affected tumor formation and abolished anthocyanin induction, only one of the genes had a large contribution to tumor formation, while another effector gene was primarily responsible for the anthocyanin induction. Unexpectedly, the cluster mutant could still colonize plants and complete the life cycle, i.e. behaves like an endophyte. Despite only small contributions to tumor formation, individual effector mutants caused distinct plant responses, suggesting that they affect discrete plant processes. On these grounds we are proposing to use plant responses as a general readout to assess and compare effector gene function.

Microbes attempting to colonize plants are recognized through the plant immune surveillance system. This leads to a complex array of global as well as specific defense responses, which are often associated with plant cell death and subsequent arrest of the invader. The responses also entail complex changes in phytohormone signaling pathways. Among these, salicylic acid signaling is an important pathway because of its ability to trigger plant cell death. As biotrophic and hemibiotrophic pathogens need to invade living plant tissue to cause disease, they have evolved efficient strategies to downregulate salicylic acid signaling by virulence effectors, which can be proteins or secondary metabolites. Here we review the strategies prokaryotic pathogens have developed to target salicylic acid biosynthesis and signaling, and contrast this with recent insights into how plant pathogenic eukaryotic fungi and oomycetes accomplish the same goal.