A disguised plant immune receptor lures pathogen effector.

Plants use nucleotide-binding/leucine-rich-repeat receptors (NLRs) to detect rapidly evolving pathogen effectors. Gómez De La Cruz et al. reveal MLA3 recognizes an effector by structurally mimicking a host virulence target interface, rather than through the guard/decoy model or an NLR integrated domain, offering principles for rational NLR engineering toward broad-spectrum disease resistance.