Grants and Contracts Details
Description
Legumes represent the second most important family of crop plants, accounting for ~27% of the world’s crop
production. A hallmark trait of legumes is their unique ability to establish a root nodule symbiosis with nitrogenfixing
soil bacteria, known as rhizobia. However, the beneficial function of the legume-rhizobia mutualism varies
tremendously with different plant-rhizobial combinations and environmental conditions. Even though many
legumes can nodulate with indigenous soil bacteria, the nitrogen fixation efficiency of the resulting nodules is
frequently low, which is insufficient to provide the plant with all its demand for organic nitrogen. Thus, there
exists a great potential to improve the effectiveness of symbiotic nitrogen fixation and consequently enhance the
benefit of the legume-rhizobia symbiosis to sustainable agriculture. Unfortunately, nitrogen fixation efficiency is a
complex trait involving multi-level interactions between host and bacterial signal molecules. Despite recent
advances in our understanding of the signaling pathways leading to root nodule development, the molecular
mechanisms underlying natural variation in nitrogen fixation efficiency/specificity are largely unknown. The overall
goal of this proposal is twofold: 1) to explore genomic signatures of efficient nitrogen fixation in the legumerhizobia
symbiosis using the Medicago-Sinorhizobium model, and 2) to clone and characterize a host gene that
regulates strain-specific nitrogen fixation in Medicago truncatula. This research will provide novel insights into
the genetic mechanisms that regulate host specificity in the legume-rhizobial symbiosis
Status | Finished |
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Effective start/end date | 7/1/12 → 6/30/14 |
Funding
- KY Science and Technology Co Inc: $50,000.00
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