Science, Space and Technology News 2024
Researchers have discovered that Rhizobia bacteria, known for their symbiotic relationship with legumes, can also form similar partnerships with marine diatoms. This discovery, which sheds light on a significant portion of marine nitrogen fixation, has implications for both marine biology and agricultural technology. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
Atmospheric nitrogen gas is by far the largest pool of nitrogen, but plants cannot transform it into a usable form. Instead, crop plants like soybeans, peas and alfalfa have acquired Rhizobial bacterial partners that “fix” atmospheric nitrogen into ammonium. This partnership makes legumes one of the most important sources of proteins in food production.
“For years, we have been finding gene fragments encoding the nitrogen-fixing nitrogenase enzyme, which appeared to belong to one particular non-cyanobacterial nitrogen fixer,” says Marcel Kuypers, lead author on the study. “But, we couldn’t work out precisely who the enigmatic organism was and therefore had no idea whether it was important for nitrogen fixation.”
“It was a long and painstaking piece of detective work,” says Bernhard Tschitschko, first author of the study and an expert in bioinformatics, “but ultimately, the genome solved many mysteries.” The first was the identity of the organism, “While we knew that the nitrogenase gene originated from a Vibrio-related bacterium, unexpectedly, the organism itself was closely related to the Rhizobia that live in symbiosis with legumes,” explains Tschitschko.
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