2012 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Identification of novel rhizobial factors that induce the symbiotic program of legume

Research Project

Project/Area Number	23880033
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Plant nutrition/Soil science
Research Institution	National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences
Principal Investigator	SHIMODA Yoshikazu 独立行政法人農業生物資源研究所, 植物共生機構研究ユニット, 研究員 (80415455)
Project Period (FY)	2011 – 2012
Keywords	マメ科植物 / 根粒菌 / 共生窒素固定
Research Abstract	Legume plants acquire effectively the nitrogen nutrition by establishing root nodule symbiosis with rhizobia. Here we characterized the symbiotic mutants of rhizobia in order to identify novel rhizobial factors that are required for the induction of symbiotic reactions on host legume. In this work, we found that rhizobial mutants that are disrupted the genes involved in the purine nucleotide metabolisms do not infect normally to host plant roots and induce only small ineffective nodules. The defect in the nodule development was recovered partially by the exogenous application of plant hormones. Our findings indicate the possibility of that the purine derivatives from rhizobia are involved in infection and nodule development on host plants.