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A 2024 study found that a plant regulator called FIXATION UNDER NITRATE (FUN) helps switch down nitrogen fixation in the model legume Lotus japonicus when nitrate is available in the soil. The work links that response to zinc levels in root nodules. It offers a possible direction for future crop research, not a way for cereals such as wheat or maize to make their own fertilizer today.
What is the nitrogen-fixation “off switch”?
Legumes such as beans and peas can host nitrogen-fixing bacteria inside root nodules. The bacteria convert atmospheric nitrogen into forms the plant can use, while the plant supplies them with resources. When soil already contains available nitrogen, including nitrate, the plant can reduce nodule formation and activity. Existing nodules may also age, or senesce, and fix less nitrogen.
The 2024 study identified FUN, a TGA-family transcription factor, as a regulator involved in this response in Lotus japonicus. Transcription factors regulate the activity of genes. In the researchers’ model, zinc helps keep FUN in inactive filaments. Nitrate exposure lowers zinc levels in nodules; FUN is then released into an active state and regulates pathways associated with nitrate signalling and nodule senescence.
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The proposed sequence connects conditions in the soil to changes inside a nodule:
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- Nitrate is available. When soil nitrogen is abundant, the legume has less need to obtain nitrogen through its symbiosis with bacteria.
- Nodule zinc levels fall. The study links nitrate exposure with lower zinc levels in nodules.
- FUN becomes active. Zinc is proposed to help hold FUN in inactive filaments; with lower zinc, FUN is released into its active state.
- Senescence-associated pathways respond. Active FUN regulates multiple pathways linked to nitrate signalling and nodule senescence. The paper discusses genes including NRT2.1, HO1 and NAC094.
- Nodule function declines. The plant curtails nitrogen fixation when nitrogen is available from the soil.
This is a regulatory mechanism, not a fertilizer effect of zinc. The finding concerns zinc’s role in signalling within nodules; it does not establish that applying zinc to crops will keep nodules fixing nitrogen.
What did the experiments show?
The researchers screened mutant Lotus japonicus plants and measured nitrogen fixation and nodule function. Under nitrate conditions, FUN mutants retained functional pink nodules and had higher nitrogen-fixation rates than wild-type plants. The study also used biochemical assays and microscopy to investigate the zinc response.
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These results support a role for FUN in limiting nodule function under nitrate conditions. They are model-plant and laboratory findings, not evidence of a farm-ready trait or a quantified gain in crop yield or fertilizer savings.
Could crops make their own fertilizer?
Legumes already obtain some nitrogen through their partnership with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. The potential implication is that, if researchers can safely and effectively alter this regulatory process in crop legumes, those plants might continue fixing nitrogen for longer when soil nitrate is present. More nitrogen could then be available to the legume and, potentially, to a following crop through nitrogen left in the soil.
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That prospect is not yet a demonstrated agricultural benefit. La Trobe University’s 2024 summary said researchers were investigating what happens when FUN activity is lost in soybean and cowpea; the cited sources do not report results from that work, field trials, fertilizer savings or a commercial variety. The discovery itself was made in Lotus japonicus.
It also does not show that wheat, maize or other cereals can fix atmospheric nitrogen through FUN. Separate research into cereal approaches—such as wheat work involving apigenin and soil-bacteria biofilms, or barley work involving rhizopine and bacterial genes—uses different mechanisms. These are distinct research lines, not versions of the FUN discovery or proven alternatives.
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What the finding means now
The study adds a possible molecular target for research into how legumes balance soil nitrogen against nitrogen supplied by their symbiotic bacteria. Lead author Dr. Dugald Reid described continued fixation as a potentially beneficial trait because it could increase nitrogen availability for a legume and for crops grown afterward. That is a future possibility, not a result established in farms.
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For now, FUN is a discovery about the regulation of nitrogen-fixing nodules in a model legume. Its relevance to other legumes, practical crop performance and agricultural nitrogen use remains to be established.
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Sources
- Original Nature study
- La Trobe University summary and author comments
- UC Davis report on a separate wheat research approach
- Oxford report on a separate barley research approach
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