The International Society of Protistologists and The Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology conferred the 2020 William Trager Award on: Edel Pérez-López, Md Musharaf Hossain, Jiangying Tu, Matthew Waldner, Christopher D. Todd, Anthony J. Kusalik, Yangdou Wei and Peta C. Bonham-Smith, for publishing the most cited article of 2020 entitled: Transcriptome Analysis Identifies Plasmodiophora brassicae Secondary Infection Effector Candidates (vol. 67, pp. 337-351, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1111/jeu.12784)
The study by Pérez-López et al. investigated the occurrence of secreted proteins from Plasmodiophora brassicae, an obligate intracellular plant pathogen, in root tissues of Arabidopsis thaliana using a transcriptomic approach. They identified 32 small secreted proteins, 31 of which possess signal peptides, supporting their role as secreted proteins. Some of these proteins were found to be involved in secondary infection. Seven proteins had functional domains and one was found to be a kinase localized to the cytoplasm and nucleus. The findings provide novel insights into the interaction of P. brassicae and its susceptible host plants.