Team:NCHU Taichung/Endophyte

Endophyte

Overview

The endophytes are microorganisms as bacteria or fungi that live between plant cells, but usually would not do damages to them. In some cases, even could be beneficial to plants growth, development and protect them from both biotic and abiotic stresses [1, 2]. And it’s assumed that the endophytes inside the rice plant tissues could help the hosts to gain nutrition and strengthen defense against pathogenic organisms by producing antibiotics [2].

Advantage to plant

According to the research, out of the 32 bacteria they isolated, over half of them were able to produce indole acetic acid (IAA), a third of them could develop siderophore, and about half of them had phosphate solubilization activities indicating the plant growth-promoting (PGP) ability. [2]
All of the mentioned compounds above have to do with plants growth. IAA is a well-known and important plant hormone of auxin class. Siderophores serve primarily to transport iron across cell membranes. [3, 4] And phosphate plays a crucial role in plants metabolism as well.

Antagonistivity against pathogenic organisms

In the research, they tested the antagonistic activity of the bacterial endophytes by exposing the plant to pathogens. And it turned out that some bacteria could be isolated from plants exposed to bacterial leaf blight disease-causing pathogens, some from plants exposed to soilborne fungal pathogens. [2] And they got to know that the presence of antibacterial (surfactin) and antifungal (iturin D and bacillomycin D) genes in Bacillus subtilis .[2] As a result, we could understand that the endophytes strengthened the plants defense against pathogenic organisms by producing antibiotics.

Reference

  1. M. Maria M. de Wet, Hendrik G. Brink. (2021). Chapter 18 - Fungi in the bioremediation of toxic effluents. Fungi Bio-Prospects in Sustainable Agriculture, Environment and Nano-technology. Volume 2. Pages 407-431.
  2. Vinay Kumar et al. (2020). Bacterial endophytes of rice (Oryza sativa L.) and their potential for plant growth promotion and antagonistic activities. South African Journal of Botany. Volume 134. Pages 50-63.
  3. Neilands JB. (1995). Siderophores: structure and function of microbial iron transport compounds. The Journal of Biological Chemistry. 270 (45): 26723–6.
  4. Hider RC, Kong X. (2010). Chemistry and biology of siderophores. Natural Product Reports. 27 (5): 637–57.
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