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Rhizobia, soil bacteria of the Rhizobiales, enter the roots of homologous legumes, where they induce the formation of nitrogen-fixing nodules. Signals emanating from both symbiotic partners control nodule development. Efficient nodulation requires precise, temporal regulation of symbiotic genes. Roots continuously release flavonoids that interact with transcriptional activators of the LysR family. NodD proteins, which are members of this family, act both as sensors of the environment and modulate the expression of genes preceded by conserved promoter sequences called nod-boxes. The symbiotic plasmid of the broad host-range Rhizobium sp. NGR234 caries 19 nod-boxes (NB1 to NB19), all of which were cloned upstream of a lacZ-reporter gene. A flavonoid, daidzein was able to induce 18 of the 19 nod-boxes in a NodD1-dependent manner. Interestingly, induction of four nod-boxes (NB6, NB15, NB16 and NB17) is highly dependent on NodD2 and was delayed in comparison with the others. In turn, NodD2 is involved in the repression of the NB8 nodABCIJnolOnoeI operon. Activation of transcription of nodD2 is also dependent on flavonoids despite the absence of a nod-box like sequence in the upstream promoter region. Mutational analysis showed that syrM 2 (another member of the LysR family), which is controlled by NB19, is also necessary for expression of nodD 2. Thus, NodD1, NodD2 and SyrM2 co-modulate a flavonoid-inducible regulatory cascade that coordinates the expression of symbiotic genes with nodule development.

An increasing number of hypotheses are being proposed to explain the faster growth potential of triploids in molluscs, including their partial sterility or their higher heterozygosity compared to diploids. Triploid advantage however, remains controversial for poorer sites, because of a potential trade-off with survival. These questions were addressed in Crassostrea gigas by deploying meiosis II triploids and their diploid siblings from a single mass spawning of three males and seven females, in two contrasting locations for their trophic resources. One hundred and fifty individuals were sampled at each site after nine months, measured for weight and biochemical composition, and genotyped using three microsatellite and seven allozyme loci. Higher performance was observed at the fast-growing site for all traits except shell weight, and triploids had greater weights and biochemical contents than diploids at harvest. Triploids also grew faster at the poorer site, and showed similar survival rates to diploids at both sites. Triploids had significantly higher average allozyme and microsatellite diversity. However, they performed better for a wide range of individual heterozygosity values, arguing for an advantage of the triploid state per se, that could be due to positive effects on growth of both sterility of triploids with subsequent resource re-allocation and possible faster transcription with three copies of each gene. Despite evidence of very low or no inbreeding in the diploid sample, positive associations between individual allozyme diversity and growth were detected, which explained little but significant amounts of phenotypic variation. These associations were interpreted as direct effects of allozymes, either alone or including epistatic interactions with other loci. In addition, measures of individual distance (mean-d2) specific to microsatellites, were negatively correlated with growth in diploids, indicating possible effects of outbreeding depression between more distant genomes of parents from distinct populations.