Scientists have discovered a new partnership between a marine diatom and a bacterium that can account for a large share of nitrogen fixation in vast regions of the ocean.
The newly-discovered bacterial symbiont is closely related to the nitrogen-fixing Rhizobia which live in partnership with many crop plants and may open up new avenues to engineer nitrogen-fixing plants.
Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, now report that Rhizobia can also form similar partnerships with tiny marine plants called diatoms -- a discovery that solves a long-standing marine mystery and which has potentially far-reaching agricultural applications.For many years it was assumed that most nitrogen fixation in the oceans was carried out by photosynthetic organisms called cyanobacteria.
Tschitschko agrees that the identity and organelle like nature of the symbiont is particularly intriguing,"So far, such organelles have only been shown to originate from the cyanobacteria, but the implications of finding them amongst the Rhizobiales are very exciting, considering that these bacteria are incredibly important for agriculture. The small size and organelle-like nature of the marine Rhizobiales means that it might be a key candidate to engineer nitrogen-fixing plants someday.
Nitrogen is an essential nutrient for plant growth, but the overuse of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers in agriculture is not sustainable. A team of bacteriologists and plant scientists discuss the ...
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