All stimuli were administered to cells by using a light-tight syringe through the luminometer port. The experiments were terminated by lysing the cells with 15% ethanol in a Ca2+-rich solution
(0.5 M CaCl2 in H2O) to discharge the remaining aequorin pool. For experiments performed in the presence of different external Ca2+ concentrations, cells were extensively washed and resuspended in buffer A (25 mM Hepes, 125 mM NaCl, 1 mM MgCl2, pH 7.5), as GDC-0994 cost described by [16]. When needed, cells were pretreated for 10 min with 5 mM EGTA. Bacterial cell viability assay Bacterial cell viability was monitored by the LIVE/DEAD® BacLight™ Bacterial Viability kit (Molecular Probes), according Adriamycin mouse to manufacturer’s instructions. This fluorescence-based assay use a mixture of SYTO 9 and propidium iodide stains to distinguish live and dead bacteria. selleck inhibitor Bacteria with intact cell membranes stain fluorescent green, whereas bacteria with damaged
membranes stain fluorescent red. Samples were observed with a Leica 5000B fluorescence microscope. Images were acquired with a Leica 300F digital camera using the Leica Application Suite (LAS) software. Semi-quantitative RT-PCR experiments M. loti cells grown to mid-exponential phase and treated as for Ca2+ measurement experiments (see above) were incubated for 1 h with plant root exudates, tetronic acid or cell culture medium only (as control). To stabilize RNA, bacteria were treated with the RNA protect Bacteria Reagent (Qiagen). Bacterial cell wall was then lysed with 1 μg/ml lysozyme (Sigma) in TE buffer. Total RNA was first extracted using RNeasy Mini kit (Qiagen) and, after DNAse I treatment (Promega),
quantified. RNA (5 μg) was primed with Random Decamers (Ambion), reverse transcribed with PowerScript Reverse Transcriptase (Clontech) and diluted 1:5. 5 μl of diluted first-strand cDNA were used as acetylcholine a template in a 50 μl PCR reaction solution. Reverse transcription (RT)-PCR was performed with 5 μl diluted first-strand cDNA. The oligonucleotide primers were designed against nodA, nodB, nodC and glutamine synthetase II (GSII) sequences from M. loti [43] and the aequorin gene (aeq) from Aequorea victoria [44], using Primer 3 software. To amplify 16S rRNA gene, Y1 and Y2 primers were used [45]. The thermal cycler was programmed with the following parameters: 20 s at 94°C, 30 s at 68°C and Advantage 2 Polymerase mix (Clontech) was used as Taq polymerase. PCR reactions were allowed to proceed for different number of cycles to determine the exponential phase of amplification. Densitometric analysis of ethidium bromide-stained agarose gels (0.5 μg/ml) was performed using QuantityOne software (Bio-Rad). RT-PCR experiments were conducted in triplicate on three independent experiments.