Plants interact closely with the surrounding community of microorganisms. Such associations can be mutually beneficial or may cause plant diseases with high economic costs. Cyril Zipfel and Giles Oldroyd review the commonalities and differences in signalling pathways that enable the establishment of favourable or pathogenic plant–microbe interactions.

The interactions of plants with the environment are not limited to those with microbes: many other biotic and abiotic factors affect plant growth and development. Analyses of morphological adaptations have helped to address the question of how plants respond to their environment. Ben Scheres and Wim van der Putten discuss why it is important to obtain detailed, molecular-level insights into specific plant responses to distinct external signals and to build up a picture of how molecular responses shape the evolution of ecological life histories.

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