The mechanical force that a single fungal cell or bacterial
colony exerts on a plant cell may seem vanishingly small, but it plays a heavy
role in setting up some of the most fundamental symbiotic relationships in
biology. In fact, it may not be too much of a stretch to say that plants may
have never moved onto land without the ability to respond to the touch of
beneficial fungi, according to a new study led by Jean-Michel Ané, a professor
of agronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.