Roles and delivery mechanisms of fungal effectors during infection development: Common threads and new directions

Fungal effectors have often been referred as a 'sea of diversity', but recently, experiments have shed some light onto effector biology, including discovery that unrelated fungi utilize some common methods for creating a more compatible host environment. A wheat pathogen and a rice pathogen, for example, have evolved mechanisms to suppress chitin-mediated basal defenses in their respective plant hosts. Smut fungi, on the other hand, might have evolved a unique mechanism to manipulate their host environment by altering cell metabolism. Genome mining and bioinformatics pipelines have streamlined the suite of effectors in important pathogen genomes, so researchers can make more targeted strikes on potentially important effectors. This combination of informatics and empirical studies will allow greater insight into effector function.