Table 1.

Summary of small RNAs movement between plants and fungi

Plant host	Fungal life style	Fungal pathogen	Target genes	Evidence	Reference
Barley	Biotrophic	Blumeria graminis	Effector gene Avra10	Reduced fungal development	Nowara et al. (2010)
Barley	Biotrophic	B. graminis	50 Blumeria effector candidates	Eight were identified contributing to infection	Pliego et al. (2013)
Wheat	Biotrophic	Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici	Calcineurin homologs Pscna1/Pscnb1	Slower extension of fungal hyphae and reduced production of urediospores	Zhang et al. (2012)
Wheat	Biotrophic	P. striiformis f. sp. tritici	MAPK kinase gene PsFUZ7	Hyphal development strongly restricted, necrosis of plant cells in resistance responses induced	Zhu et al. (2017)
Wheat	Biotrophic	P. striiformis f. sp. tritici	PKA catalytic subunit gene PsCPK1	Significant reduction in the length of infection hyphae and disease phenotype	Qi et al. (2018)
Wheat	Biotrophic	Puccinia triticina	MAP kinase (PtMAPK1), cyclophilin (PtCYC1), and calcineurin B (PtCNB)	Disease suppression, compromising fungal growth and sporulation	Panwar et al. (2013a)
Wheat	Biotrophic	P. triticina	Three predicted pathogenicity genes encoding MAPK, cyclophilin, and calcineurin regulatory subunit	Suppressed disease phenotype	Panwar et al. (2013b)
Wheat	Biotrophic	Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici	Haustoria‐enriched genes	Reduced fungi development	Yin et al. (2015)
Lettuce	Biotrophic oomycete	Bremia lactucae	Highly abundant message #34 (HAM34), cellulose synthase (CES1)	Greatly reduced growth and inhibition of sporulation	Govindarajulu et al. (2015)
Potato	Biotrophic oomycete	Phytophthora infestans	Three genes important in the infection, PiGPB1, PiCESA2, and PiPEC, together with PiGAPDH taking part in basic cell maintenance	Hp‐PiGBP1 targeting the G protein β‐subunit (PiGPB1) important for pathogenicity resulted in most restricted disease progress	Jahan et al. (2015)
Potato	Biotrophic oomycete	P. infestans	RXLR effector Avr3a gene	Imparted partial resistance to late blight disease	Sanju et al. (2015)
Arabidopsis, barley	Hemibiotrophic	Fusarium graminearum	Fungal cytochrome P450 lanosterol C‐14α‐demethylase (CYP51) genes	Inhibition of fungal growth	Koch et al. (2013)
Banana	Hemibiotrophic	Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense	Velvet, Fusarium transcription factor 1	Resisted disease at 8 months post‐inoculation	Ghag et al. (2014)
Arabidopsis	Hemibiotrophic	F. oxysporum	F‐box protein required for pathogenicity 1 (FRP1), F. oxysporum Wilt 2 (FOW2), plant 12‐oxophytodienoate‐10,11‐reductase gene (OPR)	Survival rates after fungal infection were higher in the transgenic lines	Hu et al. (2015)
Wheat	Hemibiotrophic	F. graminearum	Chitin synthase (Chs) 3b	High levels of stable, consistent resistance to both fusarium head blight and fusarium stem blight throughout the T3 to T5 generations	Cheng et al. (2015)
Wheat	Hemibiotrophic	F. graminearum	β‐1,3‐glucan synthase gene FcGls1	Aberrant, swollen fungal hyphae	Chen, Kastner et al. (2016)
Arabidopsis, barley	Hemibiotrophic	F. graminearum	CYP51 genes	Spray‐induced gene silencing also conferred resistance against F. graminearum in unsprayed distal leaf parts	Koch et al. (2016), Wang and Jin (2017)
Wheat, barley	Hemibiotrophic	F. graminearum	TRI6, a transcription factor that positively regulates deoxynivalenol synthesis	Silencing of TRI6	Hunter et al. (2018)
Cotton	Hemibiotrophic	Verticillium dahliae	Two V. dahliae genes encoding a Ca2+‐dependent cysteine protease (Clp‐1) and an isotrichodermin C‐15 hydroxylase (HiC‐15)	Cotton plants increased production of microRNA 166 (mir166) and mir159 that silence Clp‐1 and hic‐15	Zhang et al. (2016)
Cotton	Hemibiotrophic	V. dahliae	V. dahliae hygrophobins1 (VdH1) gene	Induced silencing of the target mRNA and conferred resistance to V. dahliae infection	Zhang et al. (2016)
Arabidopsis, tomato	Hemibiotrophic	V. dahliae	Three previously identified virulence genes of V. dahliae (Ave1, Sge1, and NLP1)	Reduced verticillium wilt disease in two of the three targets	Song and Thomma (2018)
Arabidopsis, tomato	Necrotrophic	Botrytis cinerea	B. cinerea Dicer‐like protein encoding genes: Bc‐DCL1 and Bc‐DCL2	Silenced Bc‐DCL genes and attenuated fungal pathogenicity and growth	Weiberg et al. (2014), Wang et al. (2016)
Arabidopsis	Necrotrophic	B. cinerea	small RNAs‐containing vesicles accumulate at the infection sites and are taken up by the fungal cells	Transferred host sRNAs induced silencing of fungal genes critical for pathogenicity	Cai et al. (2018)
Tall fescue	Necrotrophic	Rhizoctonia solani	Genes encoding RNA polymerase, importin beta‐1 subunit, Cohesin complex subunit Psm1, and a ubiquitin E3 ligase	Lesion size was reduced by as much as 90%	Zhou et al. (2016)
Tobacco	Necrotrophic	Sclerotinia sclerotiorum	Chitin synthase (Chs)	Reduction in disease severity	Andrade et al. (2016)
Maize	Saprotrophic	Aspergillus species	AflC gene encodes an enzyme in the Aspergillus aflatoxin biosynthetic pathway	Aflatoxin could not be detected	Thakare et al. (2017)