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Stimulation of asymbiotic sporulation in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi by fatty acids

Nature Microbiology volume 4, pages 1654–1660 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are obligate symbionts that depend on living host plants to complete their life cycle1,2. This feature, which leads to their unculturability in the absence of plants, strongly hinders basic research and agricultural application of AM fungi. However, at least one AM fungus can grow and develop fertile spores independently of a host plant in co-culture with the bacterium Paenibacillus validus3. The bacteria-derived substances are thought to act as stimulants or nutrients for fungal sporulation, but these molecules have not been identified. Here, we show that (S)-12-methyltetradecanoic acid4,5, a methyl branched-chain fatty acid isolated from bacterial cultures, stimulates the branching of hyphae germinated from mother spores and the formation of secondary spores in axenic culture of the AM fungus Rhizophagus irregularis. Extensive testing of fatty acids revealed that palmitoleic acid induces more secondary spores than the bacterial fatty acid in R. irregularis. These induced spores have the ability to infect host plant roots and to generate daughter spores. Our work shows that, in addition to a major source of organic carbon6,7,8,9, fatty acids act as stimulants to induce infection-competent secondary spores in the asymbiotic stage and could provide the key to developing the axenic production of AM inoculum.

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Fig. 1: Induction of hyphal branching by fatty acids.
Fig. 2: Induction of sporulation by fatty acids.
Fig. 3: Transcriptomic responses of R. irregularis to palmitoleic acid.
Fig. 4: Identity of spores induced by palmitoleic acid.

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Data availability

All of the raw sequence data obtained in this research have been deposited in the DDBJ Sequence Read Archive (DRA) under BioProject PRJDB6134 and PRJDB6135. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank I. Nishida, H. Imai, T. Maeda, K. Ebine and M. Yamato for their critical suggestions, and Y. Ogawa, R. Oguchi, R. Okita, M. Ohashi, Y. Sugiura, S. Tanaka, A. Tokairin and Y. Yoshinori for their experimental support. We appreciate K. Yamaguchi, S. Shigenobu, Functional Genomics Facility and Data Integration and Analysis Facility and the NIBB Core Research Facilities for technical support. This work was supported by ACCEL (JPMJAC1403) from the Japan Science and Technology Agency; Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (22128006); Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) (15H01751) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science; and NIBB Collaborative Research Program (18-341).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Hiromu Kameoka, Ippo Tsutsui.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Symbiotic Systems, National Institute for Basic Biology, Okazaki, Japan

    Hiromu Kameoka, Yoshihiro Handa & Masayoshi Kawaguchi

  2. Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Osaka Prefecture University, Sakai, Japan

    Ippo Tsutsui, Hideo Hayashi & Kohki Akiyama

  3. Faculty of Agriculture, Shinshu University, Nagano, Japan

    Katsuharu Saito

  4. Research Center for Fungal & Microbial Dynamism, Shinshu University, Nagano, Japan

    Katsuharu Saito

  5. Graduate School of Agriculture, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan

    Yusuke Kikuchi & Tatsuhiro Ezawa

  6. Department of Basic Biology, School of Life Science, Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI), Okazaki, Japan

    Masayoshi Kawaguchi

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  1. Hiromu Kameoka
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Contributions

K.A. and H.H. designed the identification of the signal compounds and the bioassays of the compounds. I.T. identified the signal compounds and performed the bioassays of the compounds. H.K., K.S. and M.K. designed the RNA-seq analysis. H.K., Y.K., Y.H and T.E. performed the RNA-seq analysis. H.K. and K.S. performed the characterization of induced spores. H.K. analysed the data. H.K., K.S., M.K. and K.A. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kohki Akiyama.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–8 and Supplementary Tables 1–5.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Table 4

Differentially expressed genes in response to palmitoleic acid (C16:1Δ9Z) and/or between hyphae and spores.

Supplementary Table 6

Genes co-regulated both by palmitoleic acid and intraradical mycelium.

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Kameoka, H., Tsutsui, I., Saito, K. et al. Stimulation of asymbiotic sporulation in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi by fatty acids. Nat Microbiol 4, 1654–1660 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-019-0485-7

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