Morphological plasticity of endophytic Chitinophaga pinensis.
Liedtke J, Rodenburg F, Du C, Zhang L, Raaijmakers JM
Soil Health
PubMedBacteria already living inside the roots and stems of your garden plants are silently fighting off fungal infections and stress — and figuring out how they move and adapt is the first step toward harnessing them as a natural alternative to fungicides.
Researchers found that a helpful bacterium that lives inside plants can completely change its shape, shifting from long string-like cells to tiny round balls and back again. Surprisingly, even in its round form the bacterium stays alive, growing, and dividing — it's not just going dormant. The round shape also seems to let it hitch rides on the surface tension of fluids moving through plant tissue, helping it travel farther and protect more of the plant.
Key Findings
Chitinophaga pinensis switches between two morphologically distinct states — filamentous and spherical — each driven by a unique gene expression program
Spherical cells remain metabolically active and continue replicating despite lacking the structural markers normally associated with dormancy or spore-like states
The spherical cell form enables surfactin-assisted 'hitchhiking' motility, a cheating strategy that co-opts surfactants produced by neighboring microbes to achieve dispersal without producing those compounds itself
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists discovered that a beneficial bacterium living inside plants can dramatically shapeshift — switching between thread-like and ball-like forms — while staying metabolically active in both states. This flexibility may help it spread through plant tissues and strengthen plant defenses against fungal disease.
Abstract Preview
Environmental changes, whether due to climate change or human influences, compromise the resilience of plants to biotic and abiotic stresses, such as pathogens, drought and heat. Plant microbiota a...
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