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Plants monitor their environment for microbial invaders using pattern-recognition receptors that detect microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs). Flagellin, the main component of bacterial flagellum, contains the flg22 epitope recognized by the plant immune receptor FLS2. Immune recognition can create an evolutionary conflict, requiring bacteria to balance flagellar function and immune evasion. Here, we show that plant-associated Sphingomonads resolve this constraint by partitioning two flagellar functions, motility and colonization, across two divergent and independently acquired flagellin genes. Comparative genomics revealed widespread coexistence of FliC proteins expressing either an immunogenic variant (FliC-H) or a non-immunogenic variant (FliC-L). The non-immunogenic FliC-L is necessary and sufficient for full directional swimming, whereas FliC-H is dispensable for swimming, but sufficient for full attachment and colonization. Flagellin expression patterns mirror these functions. Thus, FLS2 recognizes the flagellar variant required for colonization rather than motility, potentially restricting colonizing bacteria from entering internal leaf and root tissues. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. European Molecular Biology Organization, https://ror.org/04wfr2810, ALTF 743-2019 U.S. National Science Foundation, https://ror.org/021nxhr62, IOS-2416244 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, https://ror.org/006w34k90, Jefferey L. Dangl Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, https://ror.org/01h531d29, 532852-2019 Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, https://ror.org/004hzzk67, 2021.0102

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

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The European Research Council (ERC) decision to increase its support for leading researchers moving to Europe has today been formally adopted. On top of its standard grants, the ERC offers additional ...

This year’s annual MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships call has attracted considerable interest from the research community with 17,058 proposals submitted.

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We investigated how maize root bacteria—alone or in community—tolerate and metabolize antimicrobial compounds of their host plant. We found that the capacity to metabolize such a compound impacts bact...

Plant-microbe research offers many choices of model and strain and whether a field-first or lab-first approach is best. However, differences between l…

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In this study, we asked whether normalization by host reads alone was sufficient to estimate absolute bacterial biomass directly from stool metagenomic data, without the need for synthetic spike-ins, ...