Structure-informed engineering of plant-microbe interactions

This review critically evaluates how structural biology has enabled interface-informed engineering of plant-microbe interactions, with a clear emphasis on the relative maturity of plant-pathogen research compared with symbiosis engineering. In plant immunity, atomic resolution structures of apoplastic receptors, host targets, and intracellular nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat receptors (NLRs) were already translated into concrete engineering strategies, including altered effector recognition, expansion of specificity, effector-insensitive host variants, and mitigation of autoimmune phenotypes. These studies collectively demonstrate that structure-guided approaches can move beyond descriptive insight to predictive and functional receptor design. Meanwhile, the rapidly accumulating structural information on symbiosis-related receptors, signaling components, and nutrient-sensing pathways indicates that engineering of symbiosis is an emerging new frontier. Structures of LysM receptors, symbiotic co-receptors, calcium channels, transcriptional regulators, and hormone receptors reveal mechanistic parallels to immune signaling, including ligand discrimination, allosteric activation, and signal integration. The manuscript argues that symbiosis engineering can explicitly draw on conceptual and methodological templates established in pathogen resistance, such as interface remodeling, domain swapping, gain-of-function channel variants, and regulatory buffering to avoid deleterious outcomes. By juxtaposing these two fields, the review identifies transferable design principles and current limitations, and outlines how lessons from structure-guided immunity engineering may accelerate rational manipulation of beneficial plant-microbe interactions for sustainable crop improvement.