An update on research on Frankia and actinorhizal plants on the occasion of the 18th meeting of the Frankia-actinorhizal plants symbiosis

Abstract

A meeting was held from the 24th to the 27th of August 2015 in Montpellier, France, on Frankia-actinorhizal plants relations. This meeting was the 18th of the series that began in 1978 at Harvard Forest, USA. The initial meeting was sparked by the first isolation of a microbe from a Comptonia peregrina root nodule in pure culture, which had morphological features similar to those of the Frankia symbiont in nodules and was capable of forming nodules on its host (Callaham et al. 1978). This effectively boosted research on the symbiosis. The 2015 meeting was the opportunity to have 80 scientists from 17 different countries, present 34 oral presentations and 51 posters. The object was to exchange ideas on a range of subjects, initiate projects and discuss various controversies. The Montpellier meeting was opened by Jean-Marc Chataîgner, the IRD deputy managing director who outlined the opportunities and challenges facing scientists working on actinorhizal plants. Then there was an invited presentation by Allan Downie, Emeritus fellow at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK, who outlined the positive and negative aspects of the actinorhizal symbiosis research in comparison with the Legumes-rhizobia symbiosis.

Omics of the early molecular dialogue between Frankia alni and Alnus glutinosa and the cellulase synton

“…Nodule establishment is a complex interactive process that is well deciphered in the case of the Rhizobium ‐Legume symbiosis (Oldroyd et al, ) and partly so for the actinorhizal host (Gherbi et al, ; Hocher et al, ; Franche et al, ) but it remains on the whole unknown in the case of Frankia . The main reason for this situation is the lack of a genetic transformation system (Kucho et al, ).…”