Microbial priming of plant and animal immunity: symbionts as developmental signals

The functional similarity between root and gut microbiota, both contributing to the nutrition and protection of the host, is often overlooked. A central mechanism for efficient protection against pathogens is defense priming, the preconditioning of immunity induced by microbial colonization after germination or birth. Microbiota have been recruited several times in evolution as developmental signals for immunity maturation. Because there is no evidence that microbial signals are more relevant than endogenous ones, we propose a neutral scenario for the evolution of this dependency: any hypothetic endogenous signal can be lost because microbial colonization, reliably occurring at germination or birth, can substitute for it, and without either positive selection or the acquisition of new functions. Dependency of development on symbiotic signals can thus evolve by contingent irreversibility.