Innate Immunity in Fungi: Is Regulated Cell Death Involved?

Author: mycolabadmin
2022-05-19
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Summary

This research explores how fungi defend themselves against harmful bacteria, specifically looking at whether they use programmed cell death as a defense mechanism similar to animals and plants. The study reveals that fungi have sophisticated immune systems that share features with both animals and plants, suggesting common evolutionary origins for these defense mechanisms. Impacts on everyday life: • Could lead to new treatments for dangerous fungal infections in humans • Helps understand how to better protect crops from fungal diseases • Provides insights for developing more effective antifungal medications • Could improve our understanding of how to maintain beneficial fungal-bacterial relationships in agriculture • May lead to new strategies for controlling harmful fungi in various settings

Background

Innate immunity is an ancient cell-autonomous property of eukaryotes that allows them to regulate interactions with antagonistic microbes. While animal and plant innate immunity systems are well understood, innate defenses in fungi are only beginning to be unraveled. Both animal and plant immune systems consist of surveillance, signal transduction, and response modules, which exhibit remarkable functional similarities and are products of convergent/parallel evolutionary trajectories.

Objective

This review explores whether fungi employ regulated cell death (RCD) as part of their innate immune response against bacterial antagonists, similar to animals and plants. The authors examine the convergent patterns in animal and plant innate defenses and investigate whether similar elements have evolved in fungi.

Results

The review found that fungi respond to antagonistic bacteria similarly to animals and plants by generating reactive oxygen species (ROS) and antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). Fungi also show cell wall fortification patterns similar to plants. While fungal surveillance modules for bacterial detection may be distinct, their response modules are analogous to those of animals and plants. The authors identified several types of regulated cell death in fungi, including apoptosis-like death, gasdermin-mediated death, and ferroptosis.

Conclusion

The structural and functional similarities between suicidal programs of fungi and animals suggest shared evolutionary origins. The authors hypothesize that fungi deploy RCD in response to bacterial antagonists and propose using the Rhizopus microsporus-Mycetohabitans bacterial symbiosis as a model system for studying fungal innate immunity and RCD. Understanding these mechanisms could contribute to developing novel antifungal therapies.

Published in:PLOS Pathogens,
Study Type:Review,
Source: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1010460