Deciphering Plant-Microbe Symbioses: A Molecular Blueprint for Precision Agriculture

Symbioses between plants and microbes such as mycorrhizal fungi and rhizobia, provide critical advantages in plant nutrient acquisition and stress resilience, and thereby underpin agricultural sustainability. However, plants coexist with a myriad of soil microbes, including mutualists, pathogens and commensals, and so must accurately differentiate between beneficial, detrimental, and neutral partners to optimize tradeoffs between growth and defense. Since 2013, our research group has been dedicated to addressing fundamental questions in plant-microbe symbioses. Our work encompasses the exchange of nutrients and signals between symbionts, and the plant discrimination between mutualistic and pathogenic microbes within the rhizosphere microbiome. We first discovered fatty acids as the main carbon source supplied by plants to arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi and later revealed the phosphate starvation response-centered regulatory network that controls the root and AM fungi phosphorus uptake pathways. In addition, we identified the receptors that recognize Myc factors and have made inroads on revealing the mechanisms underlying how plants distinguish symbiotic and immune signals. The legume-rhizobium symbiosis is understood to have evolved from AM symbiosis. Related to this, our group identified the Nod factor co-receptor, MtLICK1/2, and revealed that a SHR-SCR module specifies legume cortical cell fate to enable root nodulation. Collectively, our work has provided fundamental insights into the two most agriculturally important plant-microbe symbioses, thereby paving the way for innovative strategies that harness these interactions to advance sustainable agriculture.