One versus many independent assemblies of symbiotic nitrogen fixation in flowering plants

Jeff J. Doyle (), Jian Ren, Katharina Pawlowski, Euan K. James and Yingzhi Gao ()
Additional contact information
Jeff J. Doyle: Cornell University
Jian Ren: Northeast Normal University
Katharina Pawlowski: Stockholm University
Euan K. James: The James Hutton Institute
Yingzhi Gao: Northeast Normal University

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Some species of legumes and nine other flowering plant families form symbioses with bacteria that fix atmospheric nitrogen within specialized plant structures called nodules. How and how often nodulation symbiosis originated has implications for engineering symbiotic nitrogen fixation in non-legume crops. The prevailing hypothesis of a single origin with massive parallel losses has been challenged in a phylogenomic study favoring 16 origins and 10 losses. Nodulation has been assembled once or many times from existing processes (e.g., mycorrhizal symbiosis) and therefore almost nothing about it is truly novel. Because any feature of nodulation can be explained either as divergence from a common origin or as convergence in unrelated taxa, tests are needed that can distinguish whether assembly of homologous components has occurred uniquely or convergently. Much needs to be learned about nodulation symbioses across the proposed independent origins, especially involving the master nodulation transcription factor, Nodule Inception (NIN).

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-60433-w Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-60433-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-60433-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().