Plant mRNAs move into a fungal pathogen via extracellular vesicles to reduce infection

By using RNA-seq analysis on purified extracellular vesicles from the infected tissue, we found that host plant Arabidopsis thaliana secretes a panel of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) in extracellular vesicles. These mobile plant mRNAs were delivered into cells of the interacting fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea. While using Translating Ribosome Affinity Purification (TRAP) profiling and polysome analysis, we observed that the delivered host mRNAs were associated with active fungal polysomes isolated from the infected tissue, suggesting that they are translated in the fungal cells. Overall design: Detection of cross-kingdom mRNA trafficking between the plant host and the fungal pathogen.