MFS transporter -> rizosphere colonization

[pluripotency]

I need to come up with a reason why an extra gene that codes for an MFS transporter in bacteria would increase colonization in the rizosphere of a plant.

 

So far all I've come up with "the cells can respire better, so it colonizes better". How would I start making more connections?

 

This isn't a test question, it's just a for a paper so any old reason that I can back up and say "disprove this" will suffice.

 

 

edit: I should note, the gene seems to be unique to this individual, and the individual was selected because of it's rizosphere colonization properties.

Edited June 23, 2012 by pluripotency

[CharonY]

Are you talking about major facilitator family transporter? If so, why would you assume that it would influence respiration? More importantly, what are the potential function of these transporters? After reading up on that the connection would be obviously metabolites found in the rhizosphere and their potential physiological effects on the cell under investigation.

Edited June 24, 2012 by CharonY

[pluripotency]

Are you talking about major facilitator family transporter? If so, why would you assume that it would influence respiration? More importantly, what are the potential function of these transporters? After reading up on that the connection would be obviously metabolites found in the rhizosphere and their potential physiological effects on the cell under investigation.

Wikipedia (this was also said, albiet worded differently, on a site linked to by BLAST): "transporting small solutes in response to chemiosmotic ion gradients^[2][3]." I assumed that by chemiosmotic ion gradient, a term that I learned last quarter in BIOL 160 attributed this to cell resipiration. Thylacoids in chloroplasts and something else about an H+ gradient, although I know that this is obviously for plants, it's the closest connection I have to chemiosmosis.

I'll read up more on major facilitator family transporter and how that relates to metabolites and physiological effects, thank you for the pointer

 

edit: Just reporting my findings as I go, I found a really helpful paragraph in the introduction to a long paper about MFS transporters found here http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC98904/pdf/mr000001.pdf. It says,

 

Transport systems allow the uptake of essential nutrients and ions, excretion of end products of metabolism and deleterious substances, and communication between cells and the environment (53). They also provide essential constituents of energy-generating and energy-consuming systems (54). Primary active transporters drive solute accumulation or extrusion by using ATP hydrolysis, photon absorption, electron flow, substrate decarboxylation, or methyl transfer (17). If charged molecules are unidirectionally pumped as a consequence of the consumption of a primary cellular energy source, electrochemical potentials result (54). The consequential chemiosmotic energy generated can then be used to drive the active transport of additional solutes via secondary carriers which merely facilitate the transport of one or more molecular species across the membrane (48,49).

 

 

 

 

It goes on to talk about how there are many different kinds of transporter proteins and MFS proteins are a simple version in comparison to the others such as ABC which can transport macromolcules as well as small molecules, and does not seem to rely on chemiosmotic gradients and instead uses "ATP hydrolysis".

 

 

Edited June 25, 2012 by pluripotency