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Mechanisms of Epichloë bromicola to Promote Plant Growth and Its Potential Application for Coix lacryma-jobi L. Cultivation

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Abstract

Endophytic fungi play important roles in regulating plant growth and development and usually used as a promising strategy to enhance the biosynthesis of host valuable secondary metabolite, but the underlying growth-promoting mechanisms are only partly understood. In this study, the wild-type Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings co-cultured with fungal endophyte Epichloë bromicola showed auxin (IAA)-stimulated phenotypes, and the growth-promoting effects caused by E. bromicola were further verified by the experiments of spatially separated co-culture and fungal extract treatment. IAA was detected and identified in the extract of E. bromicola culture by LC-HRMS/MS, whereas 2,3-butanediol was confirmed to be the predominant volatile active compound in the diethyl ether and ethyl acetate extracts by GC–MS. Further study observed that IAA-related genes including synthesis key enzyme genes (CYP79B2, CYP79B3, NIT1, TAA1 and YUCCA1) and controlling polar transport genes (AUX1, BIG, EIR1, AXR3 and ARF1), were highly expressed at different periods after E. bromicola inoculation. More importantly, the introduction of fungal endophyte E. bromicola could effectively promote the growth and accumulation of coixol in Coix under soil conditions. Our study showed that endophytic fungus E. bromicola might be considered as a potential inoculant for improving medicinal plant growth.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are deeply grateful to the anonymous reviewers and editorial staff for their valuable time and attention.

Funding

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 82174091 and 81872953), the Basic Medical Research Project of Naval Medical University (No. 2022MS004), and the Undergraduate Innovation Incubation Base Project of Naval Medical University (No. FR2021112).

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  1. Xing-Guang Xie and Wei-Lan Lu contributed equally to this work and share first authorship.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmacognosy, School of Pharmacy, Naval Medical University, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Xing-Guang Xie, Wei-Lan Lu, Kun-Miao Feng, Cheng-Jian Zheng, Yang Yang, Min Jia, Yi-Sang Wu, Yan-Zhang Shi, Ting Han & Lu-Ping Qin

  2. School of Pharmacy, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, 310053, China

    Lu-Ping Qin

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Contributions

LPQ, TH and CJZ conceived and designed the research; XGX and WLL performed the research, and wrote and revised manuscript; KMF and YY performed part of the experiments; MJ, YSW and YZS analyzed the data; all authors have read and approved the final manuscript. XGX and WLL contributed equally to this work and share first authorship.

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Correspondence to Cheng-Jian Zheng, Ting Han or Lu-Ping Qin.

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Xie, XG., Lu, WL., Feng, KM. et al. Mechanisms of Epichloë bromicola to Promote Plant Growth and Its Potential Application for Coix lacryma-jobi L. Cultivation. Curr Microbiol 80, 306 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00284-023-03411-z

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