Plant Cell Wall–Degrading Enzymes and Their Secretion in Plant-Pathogenic Fungi

Approximately a tenth of all described fungal species can cause diseases in plants. A common feature of this process is the necessity to pass through the plant cell wall, an important barrier against pathogen attack. To this end, fungi possess a diverse array of secreted enzymes to depolymerize the main structural polysaccharide components of the plant cell wall, i.e., cellulose, hemicellulose, and pectin. Recent advances in genomic and systems-level studies have begun to unravel this diversity and have pinpointed cell wall-degrading enzyme (CWDE) families that are specifically present or enhanced in plant-pathogenic fungi. In this review, we discuss differences between the CWDE arsenal of plant-pathogenic and…