Abstract: Plant cells rely on the receptors on the plasma membrane to sense and transmit environmental signals that mediate by the specific binding of ligands, thus initiating a series of downstream signaling pathways to maintain normal activities of plants and their responses to environmental stimuli. Receptor-like kinases (RLKs) are a group of important receptors composed of extracellular binding domain, transmembrane domain and intracellular kinase domain, which are the important regulatory hubs of plants to respond to environmental stimuli. FERONIA (FER) is a member of CrRLK1L receptor protein kinase family, which was firstly identified to play a role in the recognition between male and female game- tes in higher plants. Subsequently, numerous studies have shown that FER plays an important role in various biological processes, such as plant growth and development, hormonal cross-talk, responses to biotic and abiotic stress. FER has become a “star protein” in the studies of plants signaling transduction in recent years. With the intensification of the studies on plant pathology, the functions of FER in the interaction between plants and pathogens have attracted more attention. In this paper, we summarized the advances in understanding the functions of FER in the plants-pathogen interaction. This review will provide a reference for further understanding the mechanisms of receptor-like protein kinases of plant cells in response to pathogen infection.

Key words: receptor-like kinase, pathogen, signal transduction, host plant