Cysteine protease is one of the well-studied proteolytic enzymes in plants. This class of protease has been implicated in various physiological aspects of developmental stages in plants including seed germination, senescence, and disease immunity. A handful of studies assign plants cysteine protease in different molecular battlefield under a few selected pathosystems, and initially extricate complex molecular mechanism of resistance. Interestingly, the same type of proteases released by pathogens have been demonstrated to play a crucial role in establishing disease infection in plants. Most of which target resistance proteins resulting either in an access to the hosts biochemical loot or cascades of signals for defense. As means of enabling and disabling host immunity, this class of protease is subject to diversifying selection, which is an intriguing outcome under natural host pathosystem. This paper summarizes the key roles of cysteine proteases in a few selected plant pathosystems.
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