Study of cognitive
adaptiveness of isolated Plant Growth Promoting Bacteria in nutritionally stress
condition
Jeevan Swetha and Sayantan D.
Res. J. Biotech.; Vol. 20(7); 114-124;
doi: https://doi.org/10.25303/207rjbt1140124; (2025)
Abstract
The biological processes behind bacterial memory in different species are still
under terra incognita. Additionally, the ability of learning through association
in prokaryotes is still unknown. Cross-fertilization between the study of multicellular
creatures' cognitive capacities and that of bacteria is possible. Therefore, Plant
Growth Promoting Bacteria (PGPB) can be used to analyze this cognitive adaptation
of bacteria under stress because PGPB is crucial to the maintenance of plant physiology
and growth under a variety of stress scenarios. This study focuses on analyzing
preliminary evidence of cognitive adaptability in PGPB under nutritional stress
conditions. The isolated PGPB were treated with nutritional deprivation in both
periodical and non-periodical manners and their performance was compared with the
control group. The characteristics of PGPB, such as ammonia production, siderophore
production, phosphate solubilization and indole-3-acetic acid, as well as anti-oxidant
activities such as DPPH activity, hydroxyl radical scavenging activity and hydrogen
peroxide scavenging activities, were analysed and compared to periodically and non-periodically
stressed PGPB with control.
In the isolated PGPB post-nutrition deprivation treatment, it was evident that the
periodically stressed performed better than the non-periodically stress-exposed
PGPB compared to the control wherein the isolates produced as high as 2.551±0 μmol
mL-1 ammonia, 23.04±06 mgL−1 indole-3-acetic acid, 69.16 ± 0.71 psu siderophore
and 123.578±0.429mgL-1 phosphate solubilised. Out of the four isolated PGPB, the
two novel strains, Paenibacillus alvei SJ6 and Paenibacillus alvei SJ8, have shown
to possess the supreme ability to adapt to periodic nutritional stress compared
to the other isolates in our study.
