Targeted engineering of Azospirillum brasilense SM with indole acetamide pathway for indoleacetic acid over-expression

Abstract

Rhizospheric bacterial strains are known to produce indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) through different pathways, and such IAA may be beneficial to plants at low concentrations. IAA biosynthesis by a natural isolate of Azospirillum brasilense SM was studied and observed to be tryptophan-inducible and -dependent in nature. While our work demonstrated the operation of the indole pyruvic acid pathway, the biochemical and molecular evidence for the genes of the indole acetamide (IAM) pathway were lacking in A. brasilense SM. This led us to use the IAM pathway genes as targets for metabolic engineering, with the aim of providing an additional pathway of IAA biosynthesis and improving IAA levels in A. brasilense SM. The introduction of the heterologous IAM pathway, consisting of the iaaM and iaaH genes, not only increased the IAA levels by threefold but also allowed constitutive expression of the same genes along with efficient utilization of IAM as a substrate. Such an engineered strain showed a superior effect on the lateral branching of sorghum roots as well as the dry weight of the plants when compared with the wild-type strain. Such an improved bioinoculant could be demonstrated to enhance root proliferation and biomass productivity of treated plants compared with the parental strain.