Plant-cyanobacterial symbioses: mutualism with emerging translational possibilities.

Plant-cyanobacterial symbioses are proposed as an alternative route to engineer nitrogen-fixing crops, targeting an early, likely conserved step across independent evolutionary origins.

• Why it matters: Engineering nitrogen fixation in crops remains a major goal, but existing approaches may be complemented by leveraging plant–cyanobacteria partnerships.
• What they did: The proposal focuses on the earliest step of the plant–cyanobacterial partnership, aiming to exploit conservation across multiple independent evolutionary origins.
• The result: Targeting this conserved early step is suggested to be comparatively simple and promising for enabling nitrogen-fixing crops.

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