Strigolactones: Internal and external signals in plant symbioses?

As the newest plant hormone, strigolactone research is undergoing an exciting expansion. In less than five years, roles for strigolactones have been defined in shoot branching, secondary growth, root growth and nodulation, to add to the growing understanding of their role in arbuscular mycorrhizae and parasitic weed interactions. Strigolactones are particularly fascinating as signaling molecules as they can act both inside the plant as an endogenous hormone and in the soil as a rhizosphere signal. Our recent research has highlighted such a dual role for strigolactones, potentially acting as both an endogenous and exogenous signal for arbuscular mycorrhizal development.5 There is also significant interest in examining strigolactones as putative regulators of responses to environmental stimuli, especially the response to nutrient availability, given the strong regulation of strigolactone production by nitrate and phosphate observed in many species. In particular, the potential for strigolactones to mediate the ecologically important response of mycorrhizal colonization to phosphate has been widely discussed. However, using a mutant approach we found that strigolactones are not essential for phosphate regulation of mycorrhizal colonization or nodulation. This is consistent with the relatively mild impairment of phosphate control of seedling root growth observed in Arabidopsis strigolactone mutants. This contrasts with the major role for strigolactones in phosphate control of shoot branching of rice and Arabidopsis and indicates that the integration of strigolactones into our understanding of nutrient response will be complex. New data presented here, along with the recent discovery of phosphate specific CLE peptides, indicates a potential role for PsNARK, a component of the autoregulation of nodulation pathway, in phosphate control of nodulation.