Strain-specific early, host-shaped late: the rhizobial transcriptome across symbiosis

Host identity shapes late-stage bacteroid gene expression in Sinorhizobium fredii HH103, with 1171 of 2855 genes shared across three legumes and the remainder host-specific.

• Why it matters: The early and late ends of rhizobial symbiosis have been studied separately, leaving unclear how strain and host jointly reprogram transcription from flavonoid response to bacteroids.
• What they did: Strand-specific RNA-seq compared bacteroids and flavonoid responses for HH103 and Rhizobium tropici CIAT 899 across matched host legumes, quantifying responsive genes per strain-host combination.
• The result: Nitrogen fixation and stress responses are over-represented in bacteroids, early-program dismantling is selective, and orthologue-pair sharing is higher in bacteroids (26%) than in flavonoids (5%).

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