Nitrogen economics of root foraging: Transitive closure of the nitrate–cytokinin relay and distinct systemic signaling for N supply vs. demand

As sessile organisms, root plasticity enables plants to forage for and acquire nutrients in a fluctuating underground environment. Here, we use genetic and genomic approaches in a “split-root” framework—in which physically isolated root systems of the same plant are challenged with different nitrogen (N) environments—to investigate how systemic signaling affects genome-wide reprogramming and root development. The integration of transcriptome and root phenotypes enables us to identify distinct mechanisms underlying “N economy” (i.e., N supply and demand) of plants as a system. Under nitrate-limited conditions, plant roots adopt an “active-foraging strategy”, characterized by lateral root outgrowth and a shared pattern of transcriptome reprogramming, in response to either local or distal nitrate deprivation. By contrast, in nitrate-replete conditions, plant roots adopt a “dormant strategy”, characterized by a repression of lateral root outgrowth and a shared pattern of transcriptome reprogramming, in response to either local or distal nitrate supply. Sentinel genes responding to systemic N signaling identified by genome-wide comparisons of heterogeneous vs. homogeneous split-root N treatments were used to probe systemic N responses in Arabidopsis mutants impaired in nitrate reduction and hormone synthesis and also in decapitated plants. This combined analysis identified genetically distinct systemic signaling underlying plant N economy: (i) N supply, corresponding to a long-distance systemic signaling triggered by nitrate sensing; and (ii) N demand, experimental support for the transitive closure of a previously inferred nitrate–cytokinin shoot–root relay system that reports the nitrate demand of the whole plant, promoting a compensatory root growth in nitrate-rich patches of heterogeneous soil.