AT1-Fungal NOD-like receptors

NOD-like receptors (NLRs) are an important family of intracellular immune receptors, documented in animals, plants and bacteria. In filamentous fungi, NLRs have been identified as cell death-controlling genes in a growing number of allorecognition systems. Moreover, fungal genomes abound with NLR-encoding genes, which show great diversity and lineage-specific extensions and contractions. Based on these findings, we have hypothesized that NLR proteins play a central role in the fungal immune system. We are thus set to investigate the biological roles of NLRs and to characterize the molecular mechanisms and strategies of NLR-dependent signaling pathways in filamentous fungi.