Host-Pathogen Interactions

An elicitor of glyceollin accumulation in soybeans (Glycine max L.) has been isolated from a commercially available extract of brewers' yeast. Yeast is not a known pathogen of plants. The elicitor was isolated by precipitation in 80% (v/v) ethanol followed by column chromatography on DEAE-cellulose, sulfopropyl-Sephadex, and concanavalin A-Sepharose. Compositional and structural analysis showed the elicitor to be a glucan containing terminal, 3-, 6-, and 3,6-linked glucosyl residues. The yeast elicitor stimulates the accumulation of glyceollin in the cotyledons and hypocotyls of soybeans when as little as 15 nanograms or 100 nanograms of the elicitor is applied to the respective tissues. The yeast elicitor is very similar in both structure and absolute elicitor activity to an elicitor isolated from the mycelial walls of Phytophthora megasperma var. sojae, a pathogen of soybeans. These and other results of this laboratory suggest that plants are able to respond to the presence of a wide range of fungi by recognizing, as foreign to the plant, structural polysaccharides of the mycelial walls of the fungi.