Plants live in close relationships with complex populations of microorganisms, including rhizobacteria species commonly referred to as Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR). PGPR are able to confer to plants an improved productivity but the molecular mechanisms involved in this process remain largely unknown. Using an in vitro experimental system, the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, and the well characterized PGPR strain Pseudomonas simiae WCS417, we have carried out a comprehensive set of phenotypic and gene expression analyses. Our results show PsWCS417 induces major transcriptional changes in sugar transport and in other key biological processes linked to plant growth, development and defense. Notably, we identified a set of 13 genes of the SWEET and ERD6-like sugar transporter gene families whose expression is up- or down-regulated in response to the seedling root inoculation with the PGPR or exposure to its volatile compounds. Using a reverse genetic approach, we demonstrate that SWEET11 and SWEET12 are functionally involved in the interaction and its plant growth promoting effects, possibly by controlling the amount of sugar transported from the shoot to the root and to the PGPR. Altogether, our study reveals PGPR-induced benefical effects on plant growth and development are associated with changes in plant sugar transport.
Drought is one of the main abiotic stresses, which affects plant growth, development, and crop yield. Plant response to drought implies carbon allocation to sink organs and sugar partitioning between different cell compartments, and thereby requires the involvement of sugar transporters (SUTs). Among them, the early response to dehydration six-like (ESL), with 19 members in Arabidopsis thaliana, form the largest subfamily of monosaccharide transporters (MSTs) still poorly characterized. A common feature of these genes is their involvement in plant response to abiotic stresses, including water deficit. In this context, we carried out morphological and physiological phenotyping of A. thaliana plants grown under well-watered (WW) and water-deprived (WD) conditions, together with the expression profiling of 17 AtESL genes in rosette leaves. The drought responsiveness of 12 ESL genes, 4 upregulated and 8 downregulated, was correlated to different water statuses of rosette leaves. The differential expression of each of the tandem duplicated AtESL genes in response to water stress is in favor of their plausible functional diversity. Furthermore, transfer DNA (T-DNA) insertional mutants for each of the four upregulated ESLs in response to water deprivation were identified and characterized under WW and WD conditions. To gain insights into global sugar exchanges between vacuole and cytosol under water deficit, the gene expression of other vacuolar SUTs and invertases (AtTMT, AtSUC, AtSWEET, and AtβFRUCT) was analyzed and discussed.
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