Discovery and transfer of novel pathways for phosphate solubilization
C. SHULSE (1), M. Blow (1), M. Chovatia (2), Y. Lei (3), A. Deutschbauer (4) (1) DOE Joint Genome Institute, U.S.A.; (2) DOE Joint Genome Institute, U.S.A.; (3) UC Berkeley, U.S.A.; (4) Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, U.S.A.

High yield agricultural plant growth is currently dependent on costly and environmentally damaging phosphate fertilizers. One approach to alleviating this dependency is to develop bacterial strains that can convert existing phosphorus sources in the soil to soluble forms available for plant uptake. Past attempts at developing such strains have been hindered by incomplete knowledge of the genes required for phosphorus solubilization, and failure of bacterial strains to survive in the plant root environment. To address these challenges, we are using genome wide mutagenesis of phosphate solubilizing bacteria to discover novel genes and pathways underlying solubilization of phosphorus sources, as well as bioinformatics approaches to identify homologs of known phosphate-solubilization genes from microbial genomes and environmental metagenomes in the Integrated Microbial Genomes database. We have used synthetic biology approaches to synthesize these novel genes and transfer them to the plant-associated bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens WCS417r. This research has the potential to result in significantly improved understanding of the genetics of phosphorus solubilization; novel biological tools for studying the interactions between plants, microbes and nutrients in the environment; and a first step in the development of alternative approaches to sustainable phosphorus use in agriculture.

Abstract Number: P2-49
Session Type: Poster