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Reconstruction of the Adaptively Advantages Macroevolutionary Events in the Mutualistic Symbioses

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Evolutionary Biology: Mechanisms and Trends

Abstract

Mutualistic symbioses represent the favorable models for analyzing the tradeoff between progressive and adaptive evolution which remains unclear for the unitary (“free-living”) organisms. Using the model of N2-fixing legume-rhizobia symbiosis we demonstrate that acquisition by plants of the novel extracellular and intracellular compartments (infection threads, symbiosomes) for hosting the bacteria induce in their populations novel selective pressures in favor of host-beneficial (“altruistic”) traits (intensive in planta N2 fixation, export of fixed nitrogen into the plant tissues, differentiation into the non-reproducible bacteroids). Due to colonization of extracellular infection threads, the degree of clonality is increased in the endosymbiotic bacterial populations which opens prospects for the interdeme selection for an increased activity of symbiotic N2 fixation. When bacteria colonize the intracellular symbiosomes, this activity is further elevated due to the kin selection in favor of irreversible bacteroid differentiation. The revealed feedbacks between the macroevolutionary events occurring in hosts and the selective pressures induced in microsymbionts may be responsible for the rapid filiations from regulatory-type anodular rhizospheric/endophytic associations (based on stimulation of the growth and assimilatory capacities of roots by the bacteria-produced auxins) to the nutritional-type nodular symbioses (based on the novel organogenesis ensuring conditions optimal for the symbiotic N2 fixation).

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Acknowledgments

Supported by grants from RFBR (12-04-00409a), RFBR-NWO (047.018.001), Scientific School 3440.2010.4, and State Contract (2.740.11.0698).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. All-Russia Research Institute for Agricultural Microbiology, St.-Petersburg, Russia

    Nikolay A. Provorov & Nikolay I. Vorobyov

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  1. Nikolay A. Provorov
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  2. Nikolay I. Vorobyov
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Correspondence to Nikolay A. Provorov .

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  1. CNRS UMR 6632, Labo. Evolution Biologique et, Université d'Aix-Marseille, place Victor Hugo 3, Marseille CX 03, 13331, France

    Pierre Pontarotti

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Provorov, N.A., Vorobyov, N.I. (2012). Reconstruction of the Adaptively Advantages Macroevolutionary Events in the Mutualistic Symbioses. In: Pontarotti, P. (eds) Evolutionary Biology: Mechanisms and Trends. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30425-5_10

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