Spatial organization of a soil cyanobacterium and its cyanosphere through GABA/Glu signaling to optimize mutualistic nitrogen fixation

Soil biocrusts are characterized by the spatial self-organization of resident microbial populations at small scales. The cyanobacterium Microcoleus vaginatus, a prominent primary producer and pioneer biocrust former, relies on a mutualistic carbon (C) for nitrogen (N) exchange with its heterotrophic cyanosphere microbiome, a mutualism that may be optimized through the ability of the cyanobacterium to aggregate into bundles of trichomes. Testing both environmental populations and representative isolates, we show that the proximity of mutualistic diazotroph populations results in M. vaginatus bundle formation orchestrated through chemophobic and chemokinetic responses to Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) / Glutamate (Glu) signals. The signaling system is characterized by: 1) high GABA sensitivity (nM range) and low Glu sensitivity (µM - mM); 2) GABA and Glu are produced by the cyanobacterium as an autoinduction response to N deficiency; and 3) interspecific signaling by heterotrophs in response to C limitation. Further, it crucially switches from a positive to a negative feed-back loop with increasing GABA concentration, thus setting maximal bundle sizes. The unprecedented use of GABA/Glu as an intra- and interspecific signal in the spatial organization of microbiomes highlights the pair as truly universal infochemicals.