The response of Alnus glutinosa to Frankia alni is complex with several sequential physiological modifications that include calcium spiking, root hair deformation, penetration, induction of primordium, formation and growth of nodule. A transcriptomic study of seedlings in hydroponics after early contact (2.5 days) with Frankia alni, either with a culture supernatant or with living cells separated from the roots by a dialysis membrane, permitted to identify plant genes which expression level was modified upon early contact with Frankia. Forty-two genes were significantly up-regulated in both experiments, most of them encoding biological processes such as oxidative stress or response to stimuli. Among them, the most upregulated gene was a non-specific lipid transfer protein encoding gene with a fold change of 141. This nsLTP was found to increase Frankia nitrogen fixation at sub-lethal concentration. Interestingly, it was immunolocalized to a region of the deformed root hair at an early infection stage and later in nodules, it was localized around bacterial vesicles suggesting a role in early and late stages of symbiosis.
High-resolution crystal structure of the non-specific lipid-transfer protein from maize seedlings
