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SYDNEY, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- Scientists have discovered how plant's immune systems are able to resist disease, researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia said Tuesday.
"It is vitally important that we understand how plant immune systems function," University of Queensland School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences Professor Bostjan Kobe said.
"Crop losses present a significant economic, environmental and social challenge in a world facing increased demands on food, fibre and biofuels."
"In the long-term, this research will help make more effective synthetic resistance genes that can be used to provide additional protection in Australia and worldwide from crop diseases."
The collaborative project compiled teams from University of California Berkeley, the Pohang University of Technology in South Korea and The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to understand how immune receptor proteins signal the plant to fight off disease.
"While many plant resistance genes have been identified in the past 20 years, we had a limited understanding of how the products of these genes work," Kobe said.
Plant molecular biologists used x-ray crystallography to study how these immune receptor proteins assembled during signaling and were able to determine that these interactions are what makes plants resistant to disease.
It is estimated that pre-harvest plant diseases account for up to 15 percent of crop losses per year, Kobe said.
Breeding resistant plant varieties has been the main strategy to combat plant disease, especially because pesticides can be detrimental to the environment, he said.
