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HAMAP: Frankia alni (strain ACN14a) complete proteome
General information

Species:  Frankia alni (strain ACN14a)
Species code: FRAAA
Taxonomy: Bacteria; Actinobacteria; Actinobacteridae; Actinomycetales; Frankineae; Frankiaceae; Frankia (TaxID: 326424) [NEWT/ NCBI]
Description: Frankia sp. are filamentous bacteria that grow by hyphal branching and tip extension. They produce three cell types during growth: vegetative hyphae, sporangiospores and lipid-enveloped cellular structures known as "diazo-vesicles". Frankia sp. have the ability to form symbiotic nitrogen-fixing root nodules on certain woody angiosperms, termed "actinorhizal plants". The vesicle cell type develops during N-starvation and contains the O2-labile nitrogenase. During symbiosis, they supply sufficient combined nitrogen so that the plant can grow without added nitrogen. Frankia thus can supply most or all of the host plant nitrogen needs. Consequently, actinorhizal plants colonize and often thrive in soils that are low in combined nitrogen. This type of symbiosis adds a large proportion of new nitrogen to several ecosystems. It constitutes the major N2-fixing symbioses in temperate forests, dry chaparral and matorral, coastal dunes, alpine communities and in colder regions such as in Scandinavia, Canada, Alaska or New Zealand where legumes are insignificant or absent. Frankiae have all housekeeping genes necessary for saprophytic existence plus genes for sporulation, vesicle development, symbiosis, N2 fixation and secondary metabolite production.

Frankia alni ACN14a strain was isolated from a green alder (Alnus crispa) growing in Tadoussac, Canada. It is a member of the medium host range "Alnus" strains (Cluster 1). This bacterium is able to facultatively establish a nitrogen-fixing symbiosis with alder (Alnus spp. ) and myrtle (Myrica spp. ), as well as other plants in the Betulaceae and Myricaceae. F.alni can be isolated from soils on all continents except Australia and Antarctica. It causes root hair deformation: it penetrates the cortical cells and induces the formation of nodules which resemble those induced by Rhizobium in legumes. These nodules are then colonized by vegetative hyphae (mycelium filaments) which differentiate into diazo-vesicles. It is in these specialized, spherical, thick-walled cells that reductive nitrogen fixation takes place, protected from molecular oxygen by numerous layers of tightly stacked hopanoid lipids.
Properties: Presence of flagella: not known
Human pathogen: No
Interaction: Plant saprophyte; Plant symbiont
Number of membranes: 1
Number of inteins:0
Statistics: Number of FRAAA entries in the UniProt Knowledgebase: 6710 (207 in UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot + 6503 in UniProtKB/TrEMBL)


Genome(s) sequenced

Strain:    ACN14a
Genome structure:
Chromosome EMBL accession number CT573213 (circular; 7,497,934 bp) (download entry)
Reference(s):
[1] PubMed=17151343; [ NCBI , EBI , Israel , Japan ]
Normand P., Lapierre P., Tisa L.S., Gogarten J.P., Alloisio N., Bagnarol E., Bassi C.A., Berry A.M., Bickhart D.M., Choisne N., Couloux A., Cournoyer B., Cruveiller S., Daubin V., Demange N., Francino M.P., Goltsman E., Huang Y., Kopp O.R., Labarre L., Lapidus A., Lavire C., Marechal J., Martinez M., Mastronunzio J.E., Mullin B.C., Niemann J., Pujic P., Rawnsley T., Rouy Z., Schenowitz C., Sellstedt A., Tavares F., Tomkins J.P., Vallenet D., Valverde C., Wall L.G., Wang Y., Medigue C., Benson D.R. ;
"Genome characteristics of facultatively symbiotic Frankia sp. strains reflect host range and host plant biogeography.";
Genome Res. 17:7-15(2007).
Web links:
Official genome site(s):
http://www.genoscope.cns.fr/spip/Frankia-alni-a-symbiotic-nitrogen.html
Other web sites:
Entrez Genome Project: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=genomeprj&Cmd=DetailsSearch&Term=txid326424%5Borgn%5D
Frankia and Actinorhizal Plants: http://web.uconn.edu/mcbstaff/benson/Frankia/FrankiaHome.htm#
GIB (DDBJ): http://gib.genes.nig.ac.jp/single/index.php?spid=Faln_ACN14A
PEDANT: http://pedant.gsf.de/pedant3htmlview/pedant3view?Method=analysis&Db=p3_p17403_Fra_alni
 EBI Proteome Analysis page



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