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Article Addendum
Responses of the model legume Medicago truncatula to the rhizobial exopolysaccharide succinoglycan
Kathryn M. Jones and Graham C. Walker
volume 3 | issue 10
october 2008Pages: 888 - 890
This is an open-access article
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Many species of rhizobial bacteria can invade their plant hosts and induce development of symbiotic nitrogen-fixing nodules only if they are able to produce an acidic exopolysaccharide (EPS) with certain structural and molecular weight characteristics. Sinorhizobium meliloti that produces the functional form of the exopolysaccharide succinoglycan induces formation of invasion structures called infection threads in the root hair cells of its plant hosts alfalfa and Medicago truncatula. However, S. meliloti mutants that cannot produce succinoglycan are not able to induce infection thread formation, resulting in an early arrest of nodule development and in nitrogen starvation of the plant. Mounting evidence has suggested that succinoglycan acts as a signal to these host plants to permit the entry of S. meliloti. Now, our microarray screen and functional category analysis of differentially-expressed genes show that M. truncatula plants inoculated with wild type S. meliloti receive a signal to increase their translation capacity, alter their metabolic activity and prepare for invasion, while those inoculated with a succinoglycan-deficient mutant do not received this signal, and also more strongly express plant defense genes.
Addendum to: Jones KM, Sharopova N, Lohar DP, Zhang JQ, VandenBosch KA, Walker GC. Differential response of the plant Medicago truncatula to its symbiont Sinorhizobium meliloti or an exopolysaccharide-deficient mutant. PNAS 2008; 105:704-9.
Authors
Kathryn M. Jones
Department of Biology; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Cambridge, Massachusetts USA
Present address: Department of Biological Science; Florida State University; Tallahassee, Florida USA
Graham C. Walker
Department of Biology; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Cambridge, Massachusetts USA
This is an open-access article
Download PDFIf the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.