Plant-Arthropod Interactions: Effectors and Elicitors of Arthropods and Their Associated Microbes

With the advent of omics technologies, sequencing of genomes and transcriptomes of a number of arthropods have been accomplished. These achievements, combined with nanotechnologies and in vivo imaging that allow the analysis of arthropod secretions, have brought about a renaissance in the study of host plant and herbivorous arthropod interactions. Using these approaches, intricate interactions have been revealed among the plants, their arthropod pests and associated microbes. The latter come in different forms including obligate symbionts that are essential for the survival of the arthropods, facultative symbionts and arthropod transmitted microbial plant pathogens. A body of evidence is emerging showing direct interactions between the arthropod-associated microbes and the plant host. In addition, secretions from arthropods presumably delivered into the host plant and containing proteinaceous effectors and elicitors of both arthropod and microbial origins, were shown to modulate plant immunity and metabolism acting as inducers or suppressors of physiological responses.

Molecular-level understanding of plant-arthropod interactions is important to interpret plant resistance mechanisms, host-specialization or diversification mechanisms of arthropods, evolutionary history of the genes involved in the interactions and even the community level interactions between the organisms. Furthermore, since many arthropod herbivores are pests of crops, the mechanistic knowledge of plant-arthropod interactions will be an important basis of developing effective pest-controlling strategies.

In this Research Topic, we aim to gather Original Research and Review articles on the effectors and the elicitors in plant-arthropod interactions and associated microbes, falling under, but not limited to:

- Identification and characterization of effector targets in plants.
- Identification and examination of plant detection systems of the elicitors/effectors.
- Evaluation of the impact of the effectors/elicitors in plant-arthropod-microbe interactions.
- New strategies and efforts to identify effectors and elicitors of arthropods or associated microbes.
- Characterization of effectors/elicitors and their potential functions.
- Examination of ecological, physiological and molecular plant responses to the effectors/elicitors.
- Identification and characterization of plant genes, pathways and metabolites that are induced/suppressed by the effectors/elicitors.
- Analyses of evolutionary history of the plant genes involved in the interactions with effectors/elicitors.