Nitrogen is essential for all plants and animals, but despite being surrounded by it—the element constitutes 79% of air on earth—only a few bacteria can absorb it directly from the environment. All ...

Plants need nitrogen to grow, but they can’t just grab it from the air like we do with oxygen. If the soil doesn’t have enough, farmers have to add fertilizers—an expensive and environmentally tricky ...

The developmental regulators that confer the identity of N-fixing root nodules belong to a transcription factor family (LSH) more commonly associated with defining the shapes of stems, flowers and ...

Researchers demonstrate that the plant hormone gibberellin (GA) is essential for the formation and maturation of nitrogen-fixing root nodules in legumes and can also increase nodule size. Researchers ...

From lentils to chickpeas, and even the humble baked bean, pulses are perhaps best known as an alternative, plant-based source of protein. These plants are environmental heroes: they work together ...

Scientists are uncovering the genetic switches that let legumes team up with bacteria to pull nitrogen from the air. By tweaking just two amino acids in a key receptor, they’ve made non-legume plants ...

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LSH1/LSH2 are required to make nodules an infectable and habitable organ for rhizobial bacteria: Confocal image of WT and lsh1/lsh2 roots 24 and 72 hpi with S. meliloti (n > 30 per genotype and time ...