Life Sciences Commons^™

Variation In Competitive Abilities Of Plants And Microbes For Specific Amino Acids, David A. Lipson, Ted K. Raab, Steven K. Schmidt, Russ K. Monson

Ted K. Raab

Microbes are assumed to possess strong competitive advantages over plants for uptake of nutrients from the soil. The finding that non-mycorrhizal plants can obtain a significant fraction of their N requirement from soil amino acids contradicts this assumption. The amino acid glycine (Gly) has been used as a model amino acid in many recent studies. Our preliminary studies showed that Gly was a poor substrate for microbial growth compared to other amino acids. We tested the hypothesis that the alpine sedge Kobresia myosuroides competes better for Gly than for other amino acids because of decreased microbial demand for this compound. …