Original title: Type III effectors of symbiotic Rhizobia include diverse predicted transcriptional and post-transcriptional modulators
Rhizobia are soil bacteria that help legumes make root nodules where nitrogen is fixed. Some deliver proteins called Nop effectors into the plant, but their jobs have been hard to identify because their sequences differ greatly. The researchers used a tool that predicts protein shapes and found 22 kinds of structural units in these proteins. Many predicted units can bind DNA or RNA, suggesting the proteins may affect how plants use genetic instructions.
Imagine sorting a box of mixed tools by their shapes instead of their labels. The labels may be worn away, so tools with different names can still have parts that do the same job. In this paper, predicted protein shapes act like those tool shapes, revealing parts that may bind a plant’s genetic material even when the protein sequences look very different.
Legumes rely on rhizobia to form root nodules that host nitrogen-fixing bacteria. The proposed direct route from bacterial proteins to plant gene control could help explain how both helpful microbes and plant pathogens alter development.
The abstract reports structural predictions and says the findings suggest a mechanism; it does not establish that every predicted unit has the proposed function in living plants. It also does not describe how many effectors were tested or the scope of experimental validation.
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Type III effectors of symbiotic Rhizobia include diverse predicted transcriptional and post-transcriptional modulators — Albin Teulet, Sebastian Schornack — PLoS Biology — doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3004038
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.