Common mechanisms for pathogens of plants and animals

The vast evolutionary gulf between plants and animals-in terms of structure , composition, and many environmental factors-would seem to preclude the po ssibility that these organisms could act as receptive hosts to the same mic roorganism. However, some pathogens are capable of establishing themselves and thriving in members of both the plant and animal kingdoms. The identifi cation of functionally conserved virulence mechanisms required to infect ho sts of divergent evolutionary origins demonstrates the remarkable conservat ion in some of the underlying virulence mechanisms of pathogenesis and is c hanging researchers' thinking about the evolution of microbial pathogenesis .