About the Cover
On the Cover: Nicotiana attenuata is a native diploid tobacco that has been developed as a model system for the study of traits important for ecological performance. It grows in the post-fire habitat in the Great Basin Desert of the southwestern United States and is attacked by a variety of herbivores and pathogens as it germinates from long-lived seedbanks after fires. Depicted is a fourth instar larva of Manduca quinquemaculata attacking a flowering-stage plant growing in Utah. Attack elicits increases in transcripts of a germin-like protein (GLP). When NaGLP is silenced by transformation or virus-induced gene silencing, attack-elicited H2O2, diterpene glycoside, and trypsin proteinase inhibitor defense responses are also susceptibility to herbivore attack increases, without influencing herbivore-elicited jasmonate and salicylate bursts or the release of the volatile organic compounds that function as an indirect defense. These results (described by Lou and Baldwin, pp. 1126 demonstrate that NaGLP mediates some of the herbivore-elicited direct defenses in N. attenuata. Cover image by Danny Kessler. Cover layout by Ash Csikos.
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Copyright © 2008 by the American Society of Plant Biologists
