A seagrass harbours a nitrogen-fixing bacterial partner
NEWS AND VIEWS
03 November 2021
A seagrass harbours a nitrogen-fixing bacterial partner
How underwater seagrasses obtain the nitrogen they need has been unclear. Evidence has now emerged of a partnership with a bacterium that might be analogous to the system used by many land plants to gain nitrogen.
Douglas G. Capone
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3968-736X
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Douglas G. Capone
Douglas G. Capone is in the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA.
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Seagrass meadows are a prominent feature of many shallow coastal areas of the temperate through to the tropical ocean. Seagrasses provide a crucial habitat for invertebrates and juvenile fish, stabilize sediments and buffer the shoreline against erosion1. Moreover, they contribute directly and positively to the ‘blue economy’ of the oceans through their long-term storage of carbon2. Lush and highly productive seagrass beds often thrive in nutrient-deficient waters, and attempts to solve the enigma of how they accomplish this feat have driven considerable research over the years. Writing in Nature, Mohr et al.3 provide crucial evidence indicating that the success of a seagrass called Posidonia oceanica (Fig. 1), which proliferates throughout the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea (and elsewhere), might be attributed to the development of a highly integrated partnership with a bacterium. This system is reminiscent of those found in some terrestrial plants.
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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02956-y
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