How do plants sense the environment? The Plant Peptides and Receptors Meeting.

Plants are crucial actors in sustainable futures.

The growth and well-being of plants depend crucially on their capacity to sense their environment and react and adapt, in which receptors play a critical role.

Receptor Kinases (RKs) represent one of the most expanded gene families in plant genomes and they are truly fundamental for plant survival.

These plasma membrane-localized RKs perceive diverse environmental cues and coordinate a broad spectrum of developmental and defence processes. Over the past three decades, many RKs have been characterized, highlighting their ubiquitous role in plant biology.

However, until now, only a handful of RKs have assigned ligands, like endogenous or pathogens small secreted peptides, cell wall fragments or hormones that induce specific cellular responses.

The receptor-ligand pairs can potentially navigate and orchestrate many physiological processes therefore, we are facing an exciting time to discover new mechanisms of receptor activation.

Moreover, lately, more reports have indicated the crucial role of different posttranslational modifications, like redox modifications or mechanical forces, that contribute to the functional regulation of proteins, including RKs.