Research on the interaction between plants and microbes continues to attract increasing attention, both within the field as well as in the scientific community at large. Many of the major scientific journals have recently reviewed various aspects of the field. Several papers dealing with plant-microbe interactions have been featured on the covers of scientific publications in the past several months, and the lay press have recently presented feature articles of this field. An additional sign of the interest in this field is that the International Society of Molecular Plant-Microbe...