Abstract
New data from sites in Spain, Sicily and North America establish that the spread of the European legume Cytisus scoparius (Scotch broom) across North America involved the concurrent invasion of a European mobile genetic element (symbiosis island [SI]) into North American Bradyrhizobium nodule bacteria. At four SI loci, bacteria from nine C. scoparius populations across the continent were all identical to haplotypes present in European Bradyrhizobium strains. At seven non-symbiotic (housekeeping) loci, these American C. scoparius bacteria grouped into eight diverse lineages related to, or in some cases identical to, symbionts from several native North American legumes. Inoculation experiments showed that American Bradyrhizobium strains with the European SI variant conferred superior growth to C. scoparius plants compared to strains with SI variants found indigenously in North America. Cytisus scoparius invasion in North America thus enabled proliferation of a European SI variant that spread to multiple indigenous American Bradyrhizobium lineages via horizontal gene transfer. Spread of this SI variant, in turn, likely facilitated C. scoparius invasion of North American habitats.
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All DNA sequences obtained for the project have been made available in GenBank (Supplementary Table S2).
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Acknowledgements
We thank T. Powell and K. Prior for helpful suggestions on the manuscript, A. Biro for laboratory assistance, I.M. Parker and W. Malek for providing bacterial strains, and A.R. Parker for help with seed collection. Financial support was provided by NSF Grants DEB-0212369 and MCB-0640246.
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Financial support was provided by NSF Grants DEB-0212369 and MCB-0640246.
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All authors collected strains of nodule bacteria for the research. R.F.K. and M.A.P. performed the DNA sequencing and data analysis. R.F.K. wrote the manuscript with support from S.R.-E., P.Q., and M.A.P.
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Kruger, R.F., Rodríguez-Echeverría, S., Quatrini, P. et al. Invasional meltdown via horizontal gene transfer of a European symbiosis island variant in North American nodule symbionts of Cytisus scoparius. Biol Invasions 24, 2113–2120 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-022-02776-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-022-02776-9