Conserved inhibitory mechanisms of root-associated bacteria towardsArabidopsis thaliana and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii
- 1The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Abstract
Soil bacteria colonize plants without causing visible disease, yet many suppress host growth. The prevalence and evolutionary reach of this cryptic inhibition are unknown, because phenotyping hundreds of isolates in plants is prohibitively slow. Here we use the unicellular algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as a scalable proxy for the green lineage. We screened 148 plant-associated bacteria on Chlamydomonas lawns. Seven of eight Chlamydomonas inhibitors also inhibited the vascular model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. In one of these dual inhibitors, Burkholderia sola MF6, transposon screening and proteomics implicated type VI secretion and tight-adherence pili, and over half the non-inhibitory mutants also failed against Arabidopsis. In the algae, infection triggers rapid deflagellation, then non-lytic regulated cell death. The algal zinc/iron transporter ZIP3 promotes inhibition, whereas the cathepsin X protease CEP12 restrains it, and ZIP3 is epistatic to CEP12. Cryptic inhibition is thus ancient and widespread, and a unicellular algae uncovers it at scale.
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BibTeX
@misc{vikinyanski2026conserved,
title = {{Conserved inhibitory mechanisms of root-associated bacteria towardsArabidopsis thaliana and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii}},
author = {T. Vikinyanski and E. Meilin and A. Makhon and T. Song and M. Alon and N. Alon Cudkowicz and S. Saxena and A. Akerman-Arad and O. Karmi and S. Pollak and A. Levy and M. Kleiner and M. Breker and O. M. Finkel},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.14.751450},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.14.751450v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Conserved inhibitory mechanisms of root-associated bacteria towardsArabidopsis thaliana and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii
AU - T. Vikinyanski
AU - E. Meilin
AU - A. Makhon
AU - T. Song
AU - M. Alon
AU - N. Alon Cudkowicz
AU - S. Saxena
AU - A. Akerman-Arad
AU - O. Karmi
AU - S. Pollak
AU - A. Levy
AU - M. Kleiner
AU - M. Breker
AU - O. M. Finkel
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/14
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.14.751450
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.14.751450v1
AB - Soil bacteria colonize plants without causing visible disease, yet many suppress host growth. The prevalence and evolutionary reach of this cryptic inhibition are unknown, because phenotyping hundreds of isolates in plants is prohibitively slow. Here we use the unicellular algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as a scalable proxy for the green lineage. We screened 148 plant-associated bacteria on Chlamydomonas lawns. Seven of eight Chlamydomonas inhibitors also inhibited the vascular model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. In one of these dual inhibitors, Burkholderia sola MF6, transposon screening and proteomics implicated type VI secretion and tight-adherence pili, and over half the non-inhibitory mutants also failed against Arabidopsis. In the algae, infection triggers rapid deflagellation, then non-lytic regulated cell death. The algal zinc/iron transporter ZIP3 promotes inhibition, whereas the cathepsin X protease CEP12 restrains it, and ZIP3 is epistatic to CEP12. Cryptic inhibition is thus ancient and widespread, and a unicellular algae uncovers it at scale.
ER -