Rhizobia-legume symbiosis and nitrogen fixation

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Superscript: Fe³⁺ Nitrogen is one of the most fundamental elements necessary for all life forms. Nitrogen is a major component of amino acids, the most basic building blocks of various proteins that sustain the proper functioning of a living organism; DNA, the fundamental biochemical unit of heredity that stores information in living organisms, also requires nitrogen to build up. Though nitrogen is highly abundant in the atmosphere in the form of dinitrogen gas, this molecular form of nitrogen is inert in that the triple-bonding between the two nitrogen atoms makes the molecule extremely stable at normal temperature and pressure. Given the contribution of nitrogen to sustaining life on Earth, natural biological pathways that convert nitrogen gas into bio-accessible forms are of great ecological and evolutionary significance.

    Rhizobium bacteria represent one of the groups that perform the service of biological nitrogen fixation (1). The genus Rhizobium, commonly known as rhizobia, includes species of various gram-negative alphaproteobacteria and betaproteobacteria that inhabit the root nodules of leguminous plants (2). Rhizobium was first discovered and named at the end of the 19th century when scientists began to notice that atmospheric nitrogen was assimilated into the root nodules of legumes: the german agricultural chemist Hermann Hellriegel first discovered that leguminous plants took in atmospheric nitrogen and turned it into ammonium; later, the Dutch microbiologist Beijerinck explored the mechanisms by which nitrogen is fixed through legume root-nodules and identified the bacteria responsible for this function, the rhizobia (3). Today, the pathways through which rhizobia fix nitrogen and the genetic and ecological regulations that control the process have been thoroughly studied.

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References

Authored for BIOL 238 Microbiology, taught by Joan Slonczewski, 2022, Kenyon College