Abstract
Mesorhizobium huakuii is a free-living bacterium which is capable of establishing a specific symbiotic relationship with Astragalus sinicus, an important winter green manure widely used in Eastern Asia, allowing for nitrogen fixing during this process. Previous studies demonstrate that M.␣huakuii produces quorum-sensing molecules at high cell density and quorum sensing plays a role in biofilm formations. In this study, we isolated and characterized two quorum-sensing deficient mutants in M. huakuii. Analysis of the flanking region of transposon insertions indicated that autoinducer synthase related genes are not homologous to acyl homoserine lactone (AHL) synthase genes that are shared among many Gram-negative bacteria, but related to peptide synthesis, indicating that M. huakuii quorum-sensing signals are distinct from AHLs. Compared with the wild-type strains, these quorum-sensing deficient mutants promoted their growth rate and were defective in nodule formation on host plants, indicative of a critical role of quorum sensing in M.␣huakuii during the host–bacterium symbiotic interaction.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Drs Yunrong Chai and Stephan Winans for providing strains prior to publication and Adam Joelsson for helpful discussion and critically reviewing the manuscript. This study was supported by the NSFC Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (30325004), NSFC 30570011, and the 973 project grant (001CB1089).
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Yijing Gao and Zengtao Zhong contributed equally to this work.
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Gao, Y., Zhong, Z., Sun, K. et al. The quorum-sensing system in a plant bacterium Mesorhizobium huakuii affects growth rate and symbiotic nodulation. Plant Soil 286, 53–60 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-006-9025-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-006-9025-3