Differentiation of Plant Cells During Symbiotic Nitrogen Fixation.pdfVIP

Comparative and Functional Genomics Comp Funct Genom 2002; 3: 151–157. Published online 12 March 2002 in Wiley InterScience (). DOI: 10.1002 /cfg.155 Conference Review Differentiation of plant cells during symbiotic nitrogen fixation 1 1 1 1 2 Ben Trevaskis , Gillian Colebatch , Guilhem Desbrosses , Maren Wandrey , Stefanie Wienkoop , 2 1 Gerhard Saalbach and Michael Udvardi * 1Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Am Mu¨hlenberg 1, 14476 Golm, Germany 2 Risoe National Laboratory, Plant biology and Biogeochemistry Department, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark *Correspondence to: Abstract Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Am Mu¨hlenberg Nitrogen-fixing symbioses between legumes and bacteria of the family Rhizobiaceae 1, 14476 Golm, Germany. involve differentiation of both plant and bacterial cells. Differentiation of plant root cells is E-mail: required to build an organ, the nodule, which can feed and accommodate a large population Udvardi@mpimp-golm.mpg.de of bacteria under conditions conducive to nitrogen fixation. An efficient vascular system is built to connect the nodule to the root, which delivers sugars and other nutrients to the nodule and removes the products of nitrogen fixation for use in the rest of the plant. Cells in the outer cortex differentiate to form a barrier to oxygen diffusion into nodules, which helps to produce the micro-aerobic environment necessary for bacterial nitrogenase activit