Abstract
Plants are sessile organisms that can tune their body architecture to the environment. This is very pronounced in their root system. In particular, nutrient availability strongly influences the architecture of the root system; depending on the abundance of specific nutrients, root growth rates and lateral root number are modulated. The extent of these effects is important for plant adaptation and has a major impact on plant fitness. However, the assessment of quantitative effects on a scale large enough for identifying genes and variants using quantitative genetics is difficult, and well-developed methods have been largely restricted to the model species Arabidopsis thaliana. In this chapter, we present a protocol for high-throughput phenotyping of early root traits in the model legume plant Lotus japonicus. This species allows for the study of important root-associated traits that are not present in Arabidopsis, such as symbioses with nitrogen-fixing Rhizobia and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. The methods described in this chapter can be used in the context of reverse and forward genetics approaches to dissect the genetic basis of root growth in legumes.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
References
Handberg K, Stougaard J (1992) Lotus Japonicus, an autogamous, diploid legume species for classical and molecular genetics. Plant J 2:487–496. doi:10.1111/j.1365-313X.1992.00487.x
Madsen EB, Madsen LH, Radutoiu S et al (2003) A receptor kinase gene of the LysM type is involved in legume perception of rhizobial signals. Nature 425:637–640. doi:10.1038/nature02045
Radutoiu S, Madsen LH, Madsen EB et al (2003) Plant recognition of symbiotic bacteria requires two LysM receptor-like kinases. Nature 425:585–592. doi:10.1038/nature02039
Oldroyd GED (2013) Speak, friend, and enter: signalling systems that promote beneficial symbiotic associations in plants. Nat Rev Microbiol 11:252–263. doi:10.1038/nrmicro2990
Gutjahr C, Parniske M (2013) Cell and developmental biology of arbuscular Mycorrhiza Symbiosis. Annu Rev Cell Dev Biol 29:593–617. doi:10.1146/annurev-cellbio-101512-122413
Smith SE, Smith FA (2011) Roles of arbuscular mycorrhizas in plant nutrition and growth: new paradigms from cellular to ecosystem scales. Annu Rev Plant Biol 62:227–250. doi:10.1146/annurev-arplant-042110-103846
Lerouge P, Roche P, Faucher C et al (1990) Symbiotic host-specificity of rhizobium meliloti is determined by a sulphated and acylated glucosamine oligosaccharide signal. Nature 344:781–784. doi:10.1038/344781a0
Schauser L, Roussis A, Stiller J, Stougaard J (1999) A plant regulator controlling development of symbiotic root nodules. Nature 402:191–195. doi:10.1038/46058
Slovak R, Göschl C, Su X et al (2014) A scalable open-source pipeline for large-scale root phenotyping of Arabidopsis. Plant Cell 26:2390–2403. doi:10.1105/tpc.114.124032
Slovak R, Göschl C, Seren Ü, Busch W (2015) Genome-wide association mapping in plants exemplified for root growth in Arabidopsis thaliana. In: Alonso JM, Stepanova AN (eds) Plant functional genomics. Springer, New York, pp 343–357
Fukai E, Soyano T, Umehara Y et al (2012) Establishment of a Lotus Japonicus gene tagging population using the exon-targeting endogenous retrotransposon LORE1. Plant J 69:720–730. doi:10.1111/j.1365-313X.2011.04826.x
Urbański DF, Małolepszy A, Stougaard J, Andersen SU (2012) Genome-wide LORE1 retrotransposon mutagenesis and high-throughput insertion detection in Lotus Japonicus. Plant J 69:731–741. doi:10.1111/j.1365-313X.2011.04827.x
Małolepszy A, Mun T, Sandal N et al (2016) The LORE1 insertion mutant resource. Plant J. doi:10.1111/tpj.13243
Kelly S, Sullivan J, Ronson C et al (2014) Genome sequence of the Lotus spp. microsymbiont Mesorhizobium loti strain R7A. Stand Genomic Sci 9:6. doi:10.1186/1944–3277–9-6
Schindelin J, Arganda-Carreras I, Frise E et al (2012) Fiji: an open-source platform for biological-image analysis. Nat Methods 9:676–682. doi:10.1038/nmeth.2019
Seren Ü, Vilhjálmsson BJ, Horton MW et al (2012) GWAPP: a web application for genome-wide association mapping in Arabidopsis. Plant Cell 24:4793–4805. doi:10.1105/tpc.112.108068
Broughton WJ, Dilworth MJ. Control of leghaemoglobin synthesis in snake beans. Biochem J. 1971;125:1075–1080
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Stig Anderson (Aarhus University) for materials, help, and collaboration. We thank Matt Watson for manuscript editing. This work was supported by funds from the Austrian Academy of Sciences through the Gregor Mendel Institute.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media LLC
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Giovannetti, M., Małolepszy, A., Göschl, C., Busch, W. (2017). Large-Scale Phenotyping of Root Traits in the Model Legume Lotus japonicus . In: Busch, W. (eds) Plant Genomics. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1610. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7003-2_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7003-2_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-7001-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-7003-2
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols