Legume-rhizobia Symbiosis: Current Knowledge and Future Prospects
A special issue of Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 November 2018) | Viewed by 9776
Special Issue Editors
Interests: plant–microbe symbiotic signaling; plant defense signaling; rhizosphere microbiome; plant disease management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Nitrogen is a major limiting resource to plant growth during agricultural production. Contemporary efforts to address this nitrogen shortage have turned to biological nitrogen fixation as a biotechnological solution. Legumes have the ability to establish a mutualistic association with soil bacteria known as rhizobia, which form root nodules, inside of which atmospheric dinitrogen is reduced into assimilable forms and supplied to host plants. A high level of species specificity exists in rhizobia–legume interactions, which are initiated by a signal exchange between the two partners. The infection process and the development of root nodules require a set of highly coordinated events at the root epidermal and cortical cells. However, non-legumes (with few exceptions) lack the ability to associate with diazotrophs to meet their nitrogen demands. While the most efficient processes for biological nitrogen fixation occur in symbioses between nitrogen-fixing rhizobial bacteria and plants in the Leguminosae family, less efficient yet simpler processes have arisen in plant evolution that may serve as tractable candidates to contemporary bioengineering. These simpler symbioses have the potential to be developed as new model systems using recent advancements in the fields of ‘omics’. Over the past two decades, elegant genetic, genomic and biochemical studies have been conducted on legume nodulation to decipher the intricacies of this unique plant-microbe association.
This Special Issue intends to summarize the recent progress in the elucidation of legume-rhizobia symbiotic signaling, rhizobial infection, nodule organogenesis, biological nitrogen fixation, nitrogen assimilation and nodule senescence. Submission of manuscripts on studies that utilize biochemical, genetic, pharmacological, genomic approaches to further our knowledge in the area of legume-rhizobia symbiosis and reviews that discuss the scope of transferring the legume-rhizobia symbiotic signaling to non-legumes is strongly encouraged. All types of articles, original research, opinions and reviews that provide new insights into legume-rhizobia symbiosis are welcome. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Regulation of novel and key genetic players in early symbiotic signaling
- Infection, nodule development and nodule senescence
- Environmental and hormonal regulation of nodule development
- Genome-wide analyses (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, phosphoproteomics, or metabolomics) to identify new regulators of legume-rhizobia symbiosis
- Insights on the evolution of legume-rhizobia symbiosis
Dr. Muthu Venkateshwaran
Dr. Oswaldo Valdés-Lopez
Dr. Dhileepkumar Jayaraman
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- Legume nodulation
- Root nodule symbiosis
- Symbiotic signaling
- Calcium signaling
- Rhizobial infection
- Nodule organogenesis
- Nitrogen fixation
- Nodule senescence
- Legume transcriptome
- Legume Proteome
- Legume phosphoproteome
- Comparative genomics
- Evolution of nodulation
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