Waving hello to pathogens: The dynamics of the spread of plant MAMP-triggered Ca 2+ signaling

Waves of Ca 2+ signals rapidly propagate throughout a plant to help integrate responses to stimuli as diverse as wounding, heat stress, and pathogen attack. In this issue of Science Signaling , Zhang et al . show that bacterial elicitors and physical injury likely use different molecular mechanisms to produce distinct patterns of Ca 2+ waves, shedding light on how such a universal signal leads to stimulus-specific responses.