FERONIA Kinase-Interacting Cell Wall Sensors LRX1/2 Regulate the Plant Rhizosphere Microbiome

Plants establish beneficial associations with microbiota, enhancing their resilience to environmental challenges. FERONIA (FER) kinase shapes the microbiome; despite extensive knowledge of FER interactors that regulate development and immunity against pathogens, the specific partners involved in microbiome modulation remain underexplored. Through a reverse genetic screen of <i>Arabidopsis leucine-rich repeat extensin</i> (<i>LRX</i>) genes, which encode FER-interacting cell wall sensors, we found that loss of function of <i>lrx1/2</i> leads to enriched rhizosphere <i>Pseudomonas</i>, similar to <i>fer</i> mutants. 16S rRNA sequencing revealed that, when grown in natural soil, <i>lrx1/2</i> and <i>fer-4</i> have similarly altered rhizosphere microbiomes with decreased bacterial diversity. Notably, <i>lrx1/2</i> and <i>fer-4</i> mutants both exhibit growth defects in high pH natural soil that could be rescued by lowering the soil pH and increasing phosphate. Microbiome sequencing under conditions that rescued <i>fer-4</i> and <i>lrx1/2</i> stunting showed that the altered microbiome of <i>lrx1/2</i> and <i>fer-4</i> persists independently of changes in plant growth. This indicates that FER and LRX1/2 play an integral role in shaping the rhizosphere microbiome. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.