Harnessing Natural Diversity and Rational Design for Enhanced Plant Immunity

ABSTRACT Plant pathogens cause crop loss. Genetic resistance, through natural genetic diversity or engineered resistance, can be highly effective in protecting plants from infection. Genetic resistance from wild relatives of crops has been successfully introduced into crops to control pathogen infection. Natural genetic diversity has also been used to dissect the molecular mechanisms of immunity. Pathogen recognition can be engineered due to advances in structural and computational biology, which have accelerated rational design approaches. We specifically focus on natural and engineered diversity in indirect recognition of pathogens, where the pathogen modifies a host protein and the modification is detected by a plant immune receptor, as these recognition systems are particularly common in bacterial pathogen resistance. We explore natural genetic diversity for indirect recognition at three scales (1) across species (2) within species and (3) within individuals. Finally, we extend these insights to approaches for rational engineering of plant‐pathogen recognition.