Penicillium melinii promotes root growth through subtle host reprogramming across model and crop species.
- Open access
Penicillium melinii enhances root growth and architecture across plant species by subtly reprogramming host development pathways.
- Why it matters: Understanding how beneficial fungi promote root development can lead to improved crop performance and sustainable agriculture practices.
- What they did: Researchers combined phenotyping, transcriptomics, hormone profiling, and genomic analysis to study P. melinii's effects on Arabidopsis and crops, revealing consistent root growth promotion.
- The result: The fungus fine-tunes endogenous developmental programs, enabling targeted root reprogramming, which offers potential for crop improvement and advances in plant-microbe interaction research.