On the afternoon of October 23, Professor Paul Schulze-Lefert of the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Germany, did a report entitled Plant iron nutrition mediated by the bacterial root microbiota in the lecture hall, first floor of the plant pathology building ,through the online high-end forum on plant protection, which was presided over by Professor Kenichi Tsuda.
In the report, the team of Professor Schulze-Lefert found that coumarin secretion from arabidopsis roots improves rhizosphere microbial populations and thus promotes iron uptake in iron-deficiency environments.The researchers found that coumarin synthesis is essential for plant growth and rhizosphere microbial composition in iron-deficiency environments. Artificial reconstruction of representative rhizosphere microbial communities (SynCom) can restore the inhibited growth of wild-type plants under iron deficiency, but it has no effect on Fe3+ reduction and Fe2+ absorption mutants fro2, irt1, f6’h1, s8h and pdr9 (coumarin synthesis and transport mutants), which indicating that genes associated with scopoletin and fraxetin synthesis and secretion in plants are also essential for rhizosphere microbial communities to cope with plant iron deficiency. Comparative transcriptome analysis showed that the expression of numerous genes related to iron deficiency response, iron homeostasis regulation and transport, ion transport, etc. is induced in f6'h1 mutants grown under iron deficiency conditions, but not related to the addition of SynCom, suggesting that plants alleviate iron deficiency by secreting coumarin to activate microbial-mediated iron activation processes, rather than by altering microbial communities and acting directly through coumarin.
Coumarin-microbial community model for alleviating iron deficiency in plants
During the reporting period, Professor Schulze-Lefert had in-depth exchanges with teachers and students of the College of Plant Science and Technology.