The literature and our own data on N 2 fixing bacteria forming symbioses with plants and provid ing convenient models to study the evolution of interspecies (microsymbionts → hosts) altruism are consid ered in the review. It is presented as a deeply reorganized intraspecies altruism implemented in the clonal pop ulation of rhizobia (bacteroids → undifferentiated bacteria) under the control of kin selection induced by plant hosts. The analysis of this model suggests that it is possible to engineer practically valuable rhizobial strains in which high N 2 fixing activity is combined with decreased survival outside of plants.
In N2-fixing symbionts of leguminous plants (rhizobia) evolution of the host-beneficial (“altruistic”) traits occurs in populations colonizing the subcellular compartments in nodules (infection threads, symbiosomes). These compartments are developed as a result of partners’ coevolution related to complications of trophic and regulatory interactions elevating the ecological efficiency of symbiosis. Their analysis enables us to study correlations between genetic mechanisms of adaptive and progressive symbiosis evolution which remain obscure in free-living organisms
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