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Symbiotic abilities of Sinorhizobium fredii with modified expression of purL

  • Applied Microbial and Cell Physiology
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Abstract

Previous reports showed that a transposon-induced PurL− mutant of Sinorhizobium fredii induced pseudonodules on Glycine max and the addition of 5-aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide-riboside or adenine to the plant could not restore the mutant to establish effective symbiosis. To gain a better understanding of the impact of the purL gene on symbiosis formation, we measured the effect of modified expression of this gene on the symbiotic abilities of S. fredii on soybean (G. max). A 1.98-kb in-frame deletion mutant in the purL gene of S. fredii was constructed. Transcriptional modification of the purL gene was conducted using several promoters such as those of lac, nifH, nifQ, and fixN. It was found that reduced expression of purL gene or suitable symbiotic expression of purL (such as with the promoter nifH or nifQ) can efficiently establish symbiosis of S. fredii on G. max without the exogenous supplementation of any adenine or purine precursor; at least a minimal level of expression of purL is essential for effective symbiosis with soybean.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by project 30270052 of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, project 001CB108901 of the Chinese Key-Fundamental Research Program, and project ICA4-CT-2001-10056 of the EC-RTD Program.

We thank Prof. Jose E. Ruiz-Sainz for providing the original information of S. fredii purL gene, Dr. M.F. Hynes for providing the suicide vectors, and Dr. Valerie Oke and Prof. Sharon R. Long for providing useful clone vectors. We are grateful to Prof. H.P. Spaink and Prof. Chencai Zhang for helpful discussions.

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology, Huazhong Agricultural University, 430070, Wuhan, People's Republic of China

    Bo Xie, Da-Song Chen, Kui Zhou, Yu-Qun Xie, You-Guo Li, Guo-Yuan Hu & Jun-Chu Zhou

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  1. Bo Xie
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  2. Da-Song Chen
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  3. Kui Zhou
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  7. Jun-Chu Zhou
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Correspondence to Jun-Chu Zhou.

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Xie, B., Chen, DS., Zhou, K. et al. Symbiotic abilities of Sinorhizobium fredii with modified expression of purL . Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 71, 505–514 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-005-0186-4

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