Discovery · Plant immune cell states

PRIMER cells

Plants lack specialized and mobile immune cells, so any cell type encountering a pathogen must mount immune responses and communicate with surrounding cells. We integrate time-resolved single-cell transcriptomic, epigenomic, and spatial transcriptomic data to identify the cell states that arise during infection and to describe the gene-regulatory logic specific to each. This work uncovered PRIMER cells, a rare population at the nexus of immune-active hotspots, and motivated a broader framework treating immune cell states as building blocks of the plant immune system.