This article is part of the Top 10 Unanswered Questions in MPMI invited review series.

The past few decades have seen major discoveries in the field of molecular plant-microbe interactions. As the result of technological and intellectual advances, we are now able to answer questions at a level of mechanistic detail that we could not have imagined possible 20 years ago. The MPMI Editorial Board felt it was time to take stock and reassess. What big questions remain unanswered? We knew that to identify the fundamental, overarching questions that drive our research, we needed to do this as a community. To reach a diverse audience of people with different backgrounds and perspectives, working in different areas of plant-microbe interactions, we queried the more than 1,400 participants at the 2019 International Congress on Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions meeting in Glasgow. This group effort resulted in a list of ten, broad-reaching, fundamental questions that influence and inform our research. Here, we introduce these Top 10 unanswered questions, giving context and a brief description of the issues. Each of these questions will be the subject of a detailed review in the coming months. We hope that this process of reflecting on what is known and unknown and identifying the themes that underlie our research will provide a framework to use going forward, giving newcomers a sense of the mystery of the big questions and inspiring new avenues and novel insights.

Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY 4.0 International license.

本文是MPMI邀请的审阅系列中前10个未解答的问题的一部分。

在过去的几十年中，在分子植物-微生物相互作用领域发现了重大发现。由于技术和智力的进步，我们现在能够以机械细节的水平回答问题，这是20年前我们无法想象的。该MPMI编辑委员会认为是时候进行评估和重新评估了。哪些大问题尚未解决？我们知道，要确定推动我们研究的根本性总体问题，我们需要作为一个社区来做到这一点。为了吸引具有不同背景和观点，在植物微生物相互作用的不同领域工作的不同人群，我们在2019年格拉斯哥分子植物微生物相互作用国际会议上询问了1,400多名参与者。通过小组的努力，列出了十个影响深远的基础问题，这些问题影响了我们的研究并为我们提供了信息。在这里，我们介绍了这些未解决的十大问题，并给出了相关背景信息和简短说明。在接下来的几个月中，将对每个问题进行详细审查。

版权所有©2020作者。这是在CC BY 4.0 International许可下分发的开放访问文章。