Nunes CC & Dean RA (Molecular Plant Pathology, 2011, BSPP and Blackwell Publishing Ltd): Host-induced gene silencing is discussed as a tool for understanding fungal host interaction and developing disease control strategies.
Recent discoveries regarding small RNAs and the mechanisms of gene silencing are providing new opportunities to explore fungal pathogen–host interactions and potential strategies for novel disease control. Plant pathogenic fungi are a constant and major threat to global food security; they represent the largest group of disease-causing agents on crop plants on the planet.
Plant–fungus interactions are included in recent studies of invading pathogenic fungi, such as Fusarium verticillioides, Blumeria graminis and Puccinia striiformis f.sp. tritici. The authors highlight the important general aspects of RNA silencing mechanisms and emphasize recent findings from plant pathogenic fungi, strategies to employ RNA silencing and address important aspects for the development of fungal-derived resistance through the expression of silencing constructs in host plants as a powerful strategy to control fungal disease.