what is an endophyte endophyte is any microbe fungus or bacterium that goes inside tissues
of plants and for example in grasses so these plants are sucking in these microbes out of
the soil but they're also putting them on seed so that they can then give it to the seedling
and the seedling will have these microbes for the benefit of their growth and as it turns out when a
seed germinates the root comes out and then those bacteria on that seed or from the soil
and from the soil will then colonize to shoot the root tip when are the plants
communicating to the bacteria at that moment to tell them what they're malnourished on through
that ethylene communication transfer connection that's a really good question how do plants and
bacterias work together well in this video we're going to get into it you're here with mark bowell
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okay so basically what i'm going to talk about are how plants are internalizing
and i'll say soil microbes because all of these microbes that they internalize come from the soil
initially and they adapt some of them so that they can utilize them better they they'll select
for the ones they can use the best and they'll put those onto the seeds of the plant so that
the seeds when the seeds germinate they'll have these bacterial endophytes in them or
fungal into fights okay so in the fight what is it in the fight in the fight is any microbe
fungus or bacterium that goes inside tissues of plants and for example in grasses forage grasses
or turf grasses like fescue grass or rye grass you have these fungal endophytes you also have lots of
bacterial endophytes in there but you have these fungal endophytes that are well known and people
may know the term endophyte because of these fungi that go in these grasses and this is a fungus and
you can see it here stained blue that's the hype of the fungus and it goes between the cells in
this case it's what we call inter cellular going between the cells but it goes in the grass you
don't even know it's there you've got to have a microscope to look at it okay endo meaning
inside fight meaning plant endo fight any fungus or bacterium that goes inside of so that blue is
actually traveling through the cell correct it's actually if you look in the background look at
this you can see this little piece where my arrow is going around like that those are the cells of
the plant so that blue if you look at that blue is the hypha of the fungus that is on the surface of
the cell so these endophytes go into the tissues of the plant but they stay between the cells in
what we call the intercellular space right but we have other endophytes that actually will go inside
the cells in the intracellular space a lot of these bacteria do that and that's what i'll
that's what i'll be mostly talking about now are these endophytic bacteria basically these bacteria
plants plants suck them into their tissues they suck them in from the soil and they'll degrade
some of them and some of them they'll then train to work as endophytes on the plant and they'll
keep them in there and you see them for example in roots and i'll talk about this process but you but
you can't see them in fact people have not seen them typically previous to say 2010 or so because
they have to be stained otherwise you can't tell you can't see what they are and so
we developed some stains to use them and to view them actually and you can see all these
stains here and i'll be showing images of this dab nbt ammonium olive date aniline blue basically
these stains stain substances that are produced by the bacteria or produced by the plant in response
to the bacteria so we can see them inside and you need a microscope okay so so you can only
stain what you know is there correct like you can only only what you know is there you can identify
put a stain to it and and then identify you can't just like put something out there randomly
and see every different types of things there are possibilities they're creating is that correct no
we can take any of these stains like for example a lot of these endophytes are producing ethylene
so we could take that ethylene stain one of the ethylene stains we have multiple ones we could use
we can put them on the plant and anywhere these microbes are producing ethylene we can see the
microbes right so i mean we could use it to screen plants and that's what we did really more recently
we're looking at leaves trichomes and trichome symbiosis these bacteria that go into trichomes
and i'll talk about that but uh this is an example of one of these plants this is from
the desert island the bone air i did some work there it's nice to go to these places to do uh
this is one of the islands in the dutch antilles but it's a desert island people like to go there
for diving but also they have these cacti all over this island and if you look at the cactus fruits
you can see that just like the prickly pear that we have in in north america but those fruits take
the seeds out and seeds like that and germinate those and you get a seedling like this then if
you look at the root hairs of the seedling which is what i'm showing right here you can so that
show those little root hairs and see the little dark structures inside those hairs those are the
bacteria wow that the plant took in like so so these plants are sucking in these microbes out of
the soil but they're also putting them on seed so that they can then give it to the seedling and the
seedling will have these microbes for the benefit of their growth and i'll talk about what that
how that works but it's really really interesting so plants are consuming microbes or absorbing
microbes from soils this shows a root hair again you can see these bacteria here you can see the
pairs of bacteria and these roots just get filled with with microbes that's just one example of a
plant but all plants every vascular plant all of the higher plants we don't know how how far back
this system goes where plants are using microbes but more than likely even the ancestors of
vascular plants were of plants even non-vascular plants possibly were taken in these microbes to
get nutrients from them it may be a this may be we don't know but this may be a basic plant
thing and uh okay crop plants like okay here's one can of right canada student april michigan working
trying to work on canada but it's really hard when it's illegal or when it's not fully legal
yet which is what we have here not fully legal yet but if you look at the can of seeds it's got they
actually see the seeds here they have bacteria all over and internal too so they vector these
microbes on the surface of seeds and also inside and they will suck them out of the soil as well
and this shows a root hair from canada to see all these little brown dots in there those were the
bacteria that they took in to the right you see a bigger magnification see the spherical structures
those are the bacteria that canada took in into a structure tomato you think tomato inside the
tomato fruit has got to be clean right far from true there are microbes being vectored
in those seeds and around those seeds so that when those seeds germinate they'll have bacteria they
go into the into the embryo into the seedling if you look this is one of the bacteria we got from
tomato this is something called micrococcus ludius and we like it because it has these little packets
of cells these little tetrads they're called so they're very distinctive so you can see them
when they go inside the plant and as it turns out when a seed germinates the root comes out and then
those bacteria on that seed or from the soil and from the soil will then colonize to shoot the root
tip and this orange area is where the microbes are colonizing and going into the cells and then and
that orange actually is ethylene that's produced by those microbes you can see also right there
at the very tip to the right the the purple color that's where the bacteria are going in
can i ask a quick question specifically what is ethylene and specifically what what is it
it's a good question ethylene is a plant hormone and ethylene will is used by plants to modulate
or to control fruit ripening for example but also tissue growth and that that it's a hormone that
will cause cells to elongate and uh and will also cause maturation right in fruits and the bacteria
produces it correct the bacteria are producing it and you know i mean this process i would say
i would say it's a way that bacteria can control plants but in a very negative or very low a very
limited way because bacteria produce ethylene and that causes nutrients to be released from
the plant cell so it's a way that bacteria can get sugar coming out of the plant so it's kind of
a communication right it's a communication tool it's like the microbes saying hey give me sugar
you know put ethylene out give me sugar give me sugar give me photosynthetic and then it leaks
out and then they can get some of that in one of your previous videos you were talking about
how when the bacteria comes in it's stripped i don't want to get too far ahead the bacteria gets
stripped and the plants are producing um sugars and i don't want to call atp a sugar i just i and
sometimes i want to call it adenosine the sugar and then phosphates the minerals but and then i
i kind of heard someone say that the the sugars are manipulated and changed and then attached
to the bacteria and then re-coated and sent back out through the root hairs i don't know if i said
that correctly but my question to this is when are the plants communicating to the bacteria at that
moment to tell them what they're malnourished on through that ethylene communication transfer
connection that's a really good question the plants are i'm going to put it a different way
okay please the plants are cultivating the bacteria that they need in order to get the
nutrients that they need so the plants alter the microbes that they cultivate right and how they
cultivate them they how do they do that they do that by changing what nutrients they're putting
out okay for example if the plants are looking for phosphorus and potassium and some other nutrients
that's that's what they need then they may have some nitrogen in addition to sugars in their
exudates and their root exudates and that allows because the nitrogen is out there that allows
these non back for the bacteria and the microbes that don't fix nitrogen allows them to grow
and then to acquire these other nutrients the plant needs and then they'll take that take those
microbes in they'll absorb those microbes and get those nutrients from them or they'll absorb those
nutrients from the water the solubilized component in the soil okay so in other words they are giving
the nutrients that enable them to get these other nutrients right if for example they are short of
nitrogen they will continue to put sugars in their exudates but they will withhold any amino acids
and that has nitrogen in the amino acids and so it forces the microbes to fix nitrogen and then
they will take those fix those microbes that are fixing nitrogen and take those into their tissues
that sounds like an osmotic effect you know if they're if they're i mean is that sound correct
like if they're taking a if they're not allowing the amino acids to have amino acids or nitrogen
carbon oxygen sulfur and a lot i'm missing one of them correct but if they're restricting it then
does is that creating like an osmo osmotic effect so when they're traveling around it's sucking
in to find balance it's not really an osmotic effect what they're doing is they're managing
the population of bacteria in the soil and they are by withholding amino acids from the exudates
they're forcing those bacteria to fix nitrogen and they're selecting those nitrogen fixers in
the environment right and then they can then get that nitrogen from those nitrogen fixers
so there what they're doing is somebody actually jeff lowenfeld said it nicely plants are ranching
microbes and they're you know they're cultivating the microbes that they need growing the microbes
they need and then they're taking them in and taking nutrients from them and so they are
cultivating the microbes they need depending on what nutrients they need but it's a little
different than mechanism that you suggested it's a little bit more microbe population
management approach rather than like an osmotic nutrient absorption i appreciate that approach
yeah no you're you're welcome i mean it requires a little bit different thinking about it right
yet going back to the ethylene that the bacteria is is producing um is
is that the similar process with with auxins where like certain products like um kelp meal
or kelp products seaweed products have shown to have auxins root enhancements and these hormones
is that the similar is there a similar process are they make is it ultimately then they end up making
ethylene from that or is that a totally different process with with auxins so it's a different
process but some of these microbes can also make oxygen and it's been hypothesized for a long time
that these microbes that can make oxygen auxin are stimulating uh plant growth and development
okay we don't see that in the studies that we do we're not even we're not standing for oxygen so
we're we're instead you know looking at these uh bacterial plant cell interactions and we have not
yet developed a way that we can visualize auxin in that exchange so there could be oxen produced
by some of these microbes we just don't know i mean this is we're putting together the puzzle uh
based on you know the studies that we're doing we have we have not you know gone into the literature
and just fished out and said well this this must be here well we don't assume that we instead
we've we led our work led to ethane as a key component here anyways those are good questions
uh you can see look here this is this is a a root see root cells here and you can see those little
tetrads inside those cells so this is just so you can get a close look
at the bacteria inside the cells and this is in the area that these bacteria are going in