Exploring Mobile Endophytic Microbes in a World of Immobile Plant Cells

像人类和植物这样的高等生物居住着各种各样的微生物。这是一个隐藏的世界，等待被发现。在整个进化过程中，细菌为高等生物提供了一个机会，通过与这些简单但聪明的生命形式形成稳定的关系，迅速获得新的特征。探索栖息在植物中的微生物的机会可能特别深远。为什么？为什么？植物细胞不能移动，被墙壁锁住，这限制了它们寻找远处病原体的能力。相比之下，动物细胞可以移动，这种移动性允许免疫细胞（例如白色血细胞）的进化，可以搜索和杀死。动物免疫细胞后来增加了记住病原体的能力，以建立更致命的防御，这导致了疫苗和变革性疾病预防。然而，细菌，包括植物体内的细菌，可以移动。因此，在这里，我们提出了一个对未来农业改良具有重大意义的基本问题：植物是否选择了移动的微生物来充当与移动的动物免疫细胞相似的角色，以寻找和摧毁病原体，甚至寻找营养/水源，并对过去的威胁有记忆？如果得到支持，这些概念代表了我们理解植物生命策略的新教科书范式。我们相信这些问题的突破，特别是那些对保护全球粮食生产最有用的问题，将来自研究土著人民的古老作物，包括魁北克米克马克第一民族人民，以及他们数千年前选择的野生亲戚，因为这些作物是在在没有化学杀虫剂或肥料的情况下进化，因此可能特别依赖于它们的微生物伴侣来获得有益的性状。加拿大和世界各地的老牌公司和初创企业正在投资数十亿美元，目标是将微生物涂覆在种子上或将其喷洒在田间。希望这些微生物将取代/减少杀虫剂，杀真菌剂和化肥，并减轻干旱和应对气候变化。因此，这一提案的结果可能导致新的创新，以帮助加拿大农民和世界上依赖农业的20亿土著人民，同时使加拿大成为这一新兴产业的先驱。该项目将公平地招募学生，培养他们成为下一代领导者，探索并从这个隐藏的世界中获益。

Higher organisms like humans and plants are inhabited by a huge diversity of microbes. This is a hidden world waiting to be discovered. Throughout evolution, bacteria represented an opportunity for higher organisms to rapidly acquire new traits by forming stable relationships with these simple but clever forms of life. The opportunities to explore the microbes that inhabit plants may be especially profound. Why? Plant cells cannot move, locked in by walls, which limits their ability to seek distant pathogens. By contrast, animal cells can move, and this mobility allowed for the evolution of immunity cells (e.g. white blood cells) that can search & kill. Animal immunity cells later added the ability to remember pathogens to mount a more deadly defence, which led to vaccines & transformational disease prevention. Bacteria, including those inside plants, can move however. Thus, here we ask a fundamental question with major implications for future agricultural improvement: Did plants select for mobile microbes to serve similar roles as mobile animal immunity cells to seek & destroy pathogens, even to search for nutrient/water sources and have memory of past threats? If supported, these concepts represent new textbook paradigms in our understanding of the life strategies of plants. We believe breakthroughs in these questions, particularly those most useful for protecting global food production, will come from examining the ancient crops of indigenous peoples including from the Quebec Mi'kmaq First Nations People, & the wild relatives they selected from, thousands of years ago, since such crops were bred/evolved without chemical pesticides or fertilizers and thus may be especially dependent on their microbial partners for beneficial traits. Established companies and start-ups in Canada and around the world are investing billions of dollars with the goal of coating microbes onto seeds or spraying them in the field. The hope is that such microbes will replace/reduce pesticides, fungicides, and chemical fertilizers, and mitigate drought & combat climate change. The results of this proposal may thus lead to new innovations to help Canadian farmers and the world's 2 billion indigenous peoples who rely on agriculture, while making Canada a pioneer in this emerging industry. The project will equitably recruit students to train them to become the next generation of leaders that will explore and harvest benefits from this hidden world.