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Start of funding 01.01.2008

Nitrogen transport between mycorrhizal fungi and mycoheterotrophic plants

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Most plants are forming a close partnership with fungi in their rhizosphere. In this mycorrhizal symbiosis, plants usually provide their fungal partners with carbohydrates from the photosynthesis and receive mineral nutrients, which are more efficiently being taken up from the soil through the fungal mycelium. This mutualistic arrangement has been subverted worldwide by a few hundreds of plant species that are free from chlorophyll and thus lack the ability to photosynthesize. This nutrition at the cost of the fungal partner is called mycoheterotrophy. The most numerous examples of this behaviour are found among the orchids and Ericaceae. Using innovative analytical techniques (abundance analysis of stable C and N isotopes, fungal DNA analysis in plant roots), the two research groups involved in this project were the first to show that in a similar way also apparently autotrophic plants can partially gain nutrients on the cost of the fungal partner. In this collaboration the form and function of nitrogen transport between fungi and mycoheterotrophic plants will be examined for the first time.

Final report:
The project „Nitrogen transport between mycorrhizal fungi and mycoheterotrophic plants” between Prof. Dr. Gerhard Gebauer (BayCEER – Laboratory of Isotope Biogeochemistry at University of Bayreuth) and Dr. Nicole Hynson (at that time PhD student in the Bruns Lab at University of California in Berkeley) was supported by BaCaTeC from 1 January, 2008 to 31 December, 2009. The support was used to intensify the scientific exchange between the two institutions involved. Dr. Gebauer visited the University of California in Berkeley in fall of 2008. While visiting, he gave two seminars, drafted one manuscript and submitted another with Dr. Nicole Hynson. In summer of 2009 Dr. Hynson visited the University of Bayreuth. There, she gave a seminar and contributed to ongoing research in the lab of Dr. Gebauer. During her stay, she also initiated an ecophysiology study on understory plants. The aim of this research was to identify the sources of carbon and nitrogen in plants that purportedly relied on fungi, rather than photosynthesis for nutrition. The samples from this study were analyzed for their C and N isotope abundance in Dr. Gebauer’s lab. Using molecular techniques we also identified the fungi involved in the nutrient transfer to host plants. This work was carried out in the Bruns Lab in Berkeley and later during her postdoc at the University of California in Irvine. Three co-authored publications in highly ranked journals originate from the BaCaTeC supported collaboration: Hynson et al. (2009a) New Phytol. 182: 8-11, Hynson et al. (2009b) New Phytol. 182: 719-726, Hynson et al. (2013) Mol. Ecol. 22: 1473-1481. Important results of the mutual work on mycoheterotrophic plants are also part of a co-authored recent book chapter. These co-authored publications were an essential component for the recruitment of Dr. Hynson in 2012 as Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaii.