Domestication‐associated reduction of methyl salicylate in tomato root and its significance for resistance to root‐knot nematode
Weijiao Wang, Manoj Sapkota, Sobhan Bahrami Zadegan, Tarek Hewezi, Esther van der Knaap, Feng Chen · 2026
Read Domestication‐associated reduction of methyl salicylate in tomato root and its significance for resistance to root‐knot nematode by Weijiao Wang, Manoj Sapkota, Sobhan Bahrami Zadegan, Tarek Hewezi, Esther van der Knaap, Feng Chen (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13539948.txt.
Description
Wang and colleagues report a 2026 plant study on methyl salicylate, a scented chemical best known from wintergreen, in tomato roots. The chemical plays many roles in leaves, but its making and jobs in roots were unclear. The team measured root levels in 167 tomato types, from wild kin to farm varieties, and searched the genome for linked spots.
Root levels fell with farm breeding, tied to SlSAMT, a gene that builds the chemical from the defense signal salicylic acid. Plants making more of it resisted root-knot nematodes less well; plants with SlSAMT turned down resisted better. The chemical seems to drain the root defense signal, and nematodes may gain from that drain. Breeding back root defense lost in farming could help tomatoes fight a costly pest.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Weijiao Wang, Manoj Sapkota, Sobhan Bahrami Zadegan, Tarek Hewezi, Esther van der Knaap, Feng Chen |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 52 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |