Symbiotic gene sym31 controls the presence of a lectinlike glycoprotein in the symbiosome compartment of nitrogen-fixing pea nodules

The distribution of a lectinlike glycoprotein, PsNLEC-1, was examined with a specific antiserum in nodule tissue from a symbiotically defective pea mutant, Sprint2Fix(-) (sym31), and the parent line, Sprint2. Immunostaining of Western blots (immunoblots) revealed that, whereas wild-type nodules contained three antigenic isoforms of PsNLEC-1, nodule homogenates of mutant sym31 contained only one isoform, PsNLEC-1C. Fractionation studies indicated that PsNLEC-1C was not associated with symbiosomes in either the mutant or the wild-type parent (unlike the other two isoforms from wild-type nodules), Light microscopy revealed that PsNLEC-1 antigen was more abundant in the infected tissues of wild-type nodules than in nodules of sym31. By contrast, in situ hybridization indicated that the PsNlec1 gene transcript was strongly expressed in infected cells of both Sprint2 and sym31 nodule tissues. At the ultrastructural level, most of the PsNLEC-1 antigen in sym31 nodule tissue was visualized as inclusion bodies in the vacuolar compartment of infected host cells but it was apparently absent from the symbiosome compartment. The results suggest an aberrant vesicle targeting pathway during symbiosome development in this mutant.