Abstract
Most higher plant species can enter a root symbiosis with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, in which plant carbon is traded for fungal phosphate1,2. This is an ancient symbiosis, which has been detected in fossils of early land plants3. In contrast, the nitrogen-fixing root nodule symbioses of plants with bacteria evolved more recently, and are phylogenetically restricted to the rosid I clade of plants4. Both symbioses rely on partially overlapping genetic programmes5,6. We have identified the molecular basis for this convergence by cloning orthologous SYMRK (‘symbiosis receptor-like kinase’) genes from Lotus and pea, which are required for both fungal and bacterial recognition. SYMRK is predicted to have a signal peptide, an extracellular domain comprising leucine-rich repeats, a transmembrane and an intracellular protein kinase domain. Lotus SYMRK is required for a symbiotic signal transduction pathway leading from the perception of microbial signal molecules to rapid symbiosis-related gene activation. The perception of symbiotic fungi and bacteria is mediated by at least one common signalling component, which could have been recruited during the evolution of root nodule symbioses from the already existing arbuscular mycorrhiza symbiosis.
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Acknowledgements
We thank A. Downie and D. Bradley for comments on the manuscript, A. Serna-Sanz for supplying nod-factor preparations, C. Pacios Bras and H. Spaink for making available M. loti R7A carrying lacZ, C. Ronson for providing the M. loti NodC mutant, A. Edwards and C. Martin for help with Pisum libraries, and V. Viprey for the gift of Pisum and Medicago cDNA. We thank M.-A. Torres for structure prediction. C.K. was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). Research at the Sainsbury Laboratory is funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.
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Stracke, S., Kistner, C., Yoshida, S. et al. A plant receptor-like kinase required for both bacterial and fungal symbiosis. Nature 417, 959–962 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature00841
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature00841
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