Pearls Ustilago maydis: Dissecting the Molecular Interface between Pathogen and Plant

Fungal diseases of plants represent one of the most eminent threats to agriculture. Given the food needs of a growing world population and that more and more crops are devoted to fuel production, the necessity to develop crops with better resistance to disease is increasing. To accomplish this, the mechanisms that plant pathogenic fungi use to colonize plants need to be elucidated. As of now, there are only few examples/models in which this can be done on a functional, genome-wide level, taking into account both the pathogen and its host plant [1]. The fungus Ustilago maydis (U. maydis) is one of these examples. It is a member of the smut fungi: a large group of parasites infecting mostly grasses, including several important crop plants such as maize (Figure 1B), wheat, barley, and sugar cane. Smut fungi are biotrophs, i.e., parasites that need the living host plant to complete their sexual life cycle [2,3]. They do not establish prominen