. The Biological bulletin. Biology; Zoology; Biology; Marine Biology. 216 P. BONFANTE events: the production of a tissue-like structure (the mantle) covering the root surface, and the development of a laby- rinthine, extracellular hyphal network within the root tis- sues, termed the Hartig net (Bonfante, 2001). This report focuses on arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, which have been recently classified in a new taxon, the Glomeromycota (Schiissler et a/., 2001). Fossil and molecular data suggest that roots and AM fungi have shared a cooperative life since Devonian times (Simon et ill., 1993).
. The Biological bulletin. Biology; Zoology; Biology; Marine Biology. 216 P. BONFANTE events: the production of a tissue-like structure (the mantle) covering the root surface, and the development of a laby- rinthine, extracellular hyphal network within the root tis- sues, termed the Hartig net (Bonfante, 2001). This report focuses on arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, which have been recently classified in a new taxon, the Glomeromycota (Schiissler et a/., 2001). Fossil and molecular data suggest that roots and AM fungi have shared a cooperative life since Devonian times (Simon et ill., 1993). The success of mycorrhizas in evolu- tion is mainly due to the central role that AM fungi play in the capture of nutrients from the soil in almost all ecosys- tems (Smith and Read, 1997), and in phosphate uptake in particular (Smith and Barker, 2002, for a review). As a consequence, they are crucial determinants of plant biodi- versity, ecosystem variability, and plant community produc- tivity (van der Heijden et ai, 1998). AM fungi are not only an essential feature of the biology and ecology of most terrestrial plants, they also interact with different classes of bacteria during their life cycles. In fact, AM fungi establish interactions both with bacteria living in the rhizosphere (Fig. 1) during their extraradical phase and with endosym- biotic bacteria that live in the cytoplasm of some fungal isolates (Perotto and Bonfante, 1997; Bonfante el ai, 2001). To understand these multiple interactions and to apply them in low-chemical-input agricultural systems is one of the most exciting challenges of current research in the field of molecular microbe-plant interactions. Plant-Fungal Interactions: Cells, Genes, and Signals The impressive diversity of the plant and fungal taxa involved in mycorrhizal symbiosis has resulted in their anatomical description in many hosts since the early twen- tieth century (Smith and Smith, 1997, for a review). The characterization of mycorrhizal ph
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Keywords: ., bookauthorlilliefrankrat, booksubjectbiology, booksubjectzoology
