Plant death caused by inefficient induction of antiviral R-gene-mediated resistance may function as a suicidal population resistance mechanism

Abstract

Abebe et al. investigated how changes in wildtype cucumber mosaic virus resistance can change contained hypersensitivity responses (HR) to systemic HRs (SHR) in A. thaliana and N. benthamiana plants. Their subsequent simulations suggested that resultant suicidal individual death in SHRs may function as an antiviral mechanism at the population level, by protecting neighboring uninfected kin plants.