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JXB Advance Access originally published online on February 10, 2008
Journal of Experimental Botany 2008 59(5):1047-1058; doi:10.1093/jxb/ern005
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© The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press [on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology]. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

REVIEW-ARTICLE

Cyanobacteria–bryophyte symbioses

David G. Adams* and Paula S. Duggan

Institute of Integrative and Comparative Biology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Garstang Building, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: d.g.adams{at}leeds.ac.uk

Cyanobacteria are a large group of photosynthetic prokaryotes of enormous environmental importance, being responsible for a large proportion of global CO2 and N2 fixation. They form symbiotic associations with a wide range of eukaryotic hosts including plants, fungi, sponges, and protists. The cyanobacterial symbionts are often filamentous and fix N2 in specialized cells known as heterocysts, enabling them to provide the host with fixed nitrogen and, in the case of non-photosynthetic hosts, with fixed carbon. The best studied cyanobacterial symbioses are those with plants, in which the cyanobacteria can infect the roots, stems, leaves, and, in the case of the liverworts and hornworts, the subject of this review, the thallus. The symbionts are usually Nostoc spp. that gain entry to the host by means of specialized motile filaments known as hormogonia. The host plant releases chemical signals that stimulate hormogonia formation and, by chemoattraction, guide the hormogonia to the point of entry into the plant tissue. Inside the symbiotic cavity, host signals inhibit further hormogonia formation and stimulate heterocyst development and dinitrogen fixation. The cyanobionts undergo morphological and physiological changes, including reduced growth rate and CO2 fixation, and enhanced N2 fixation, and release to the plant much of the dinitrogen fixed. This short review summarizes knowledge of the cyanobacterial symbioses with liverworts and hornworts, with particular emphasis on the importance of pili and gliding motility for the symbiotic competence of hormogonia.

Key words: Bryophyte, cyanobacteria, gliding motility, pili, symbiosis

Received 1 August 2007; Revised 23 December 2007 Accepted 7 January 2008


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