Abstract: This paper reviews the research progress of plant pathogen glycoside hydrolases (GHs) gene family in several aspects, including classification, enzyme activity, distribution characteristics and roles in pathogen infection. GHs’ roles in pathogen infection were focused. GHs play the role of virulence factors/pathogenic factors promoting pathogen infection and the role of elicitors or pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) inducing plant immunity. GHs decompose plant cell walls into damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) to induce plant immunity and the specific binding or breakdown pathogen/microbe-associated molecular patterns (P/MAMPs) to suppress plant immunity. On these bases, the molecular mechanism of plant pathogen GHs regulating plant immunity and existing problems were summarized.It provided reference for in-depth studies of more functions of GHs, as well as for better utilization of these GHs family members in crop improvement and disease control strategies.

Key words: plant pathogens, glycoside hydrolases, enzyme activity, distribution characteristics, functions