The phytohormone indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) has been demonstrated to contribute to the plant growth-promoting effect of rhizobacteria, but the IAA biosynthesis pathway in rhizobacteria remains unclear. The ysnE gene, encoding a putative tryptophan acetyltransferase, has been demonstrated to be involved in and strongly contribute to IAA production in Bacillus, but the mechanism is unknown. In this study, to investigate how ysnE participates in IAA biosynthesis in the plant growth-promoting rhizobacterium Bacillus amyloliquefaciens SQR9, differences in the produced IAA biosynthesis intermediates between wild-type SQR9 and ΔysnE were analyzed and compared, and the effects of different intermediate compounds on the production of IAA and the accumulation of other intermediates were also investigated. The results showed that the mutant ΔysnE produced more indole-3-lactic acid (ILA) and tryptamine (TAM) than the SQR9 wild-type strain (nearly 1.6- and 2.1-fold), while the production of tryptophol (TOL) was significantly decreased by 46%. When indole-3-pyruvic acid (IPA) served as the substrate, the concentration of ILA in the ΔysnE fermentation broth was much higher than that of the wild type, while IAA and TOL were significantly lower, and ΔysnE was lower than SQR9 in IAA and TOL with the addition of TAM. The TOL content in the ΔysnE fermentation broth was much lower than that in the wild-type SQR9 with the addition of ILA. We suggest that ysnE may be involved in the IPA and TAM pathways and play roles in indole acetaldehyde (IAAld) synthesis from IPA and TAM and in the conversion of ILA to TOL.
Keywords: indole-3-acetic acid synthesis; plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria; ysnE.
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