If you’ve ever enjoyed the scent of a pine forest or sniffed a freshly cut basil leaf, then you’re familiar with terpenes. The compounds are responsible for the essential oils of plants and the resins of trees. Since the discovery of terpenes more than 150 years ago, scientists have isolated some 50,000 different terpene compounds derived from plants and fungi. Bacteria and other microorganisms are known to make terpenes too, but they’ve received much less study.
Now a team of researchers led by the Netherlands Institute of Ecology has demonstrated for the first time that two different types of microorganisms — bacteria and fungi — use terpenes to hold conversations. They have shown that bacteria and fungi do respond to each other. The team leader used the example of Serratia, a soil bacterium that can ‘smell’ the fragrant terpenes produced by Fusarium, a plant pathogenic fungus. It responds by becoming motile and producing a terpene of its own. The researchers established this by studying which genes were switched ‘on’ by the bacterium, which proteins it began to produce, and which fragrance it was. “Such fragrances — or volatile organic compounds — are not just some waste product, they are instruments targeted specifically at long-distance communication between these minute fungi and bacteria.”So it’s likely that the language of terpenes forms a vast chemical communications network. — Science Daily
