How do legumes build "nitrogen fixation factories"?

Since the agricultural green revolution, nitrogen fertilizer has mainly come from chemical production, and there is a natural biological nitrogen fixation system in nature—nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil

On October 29, 2021, the international academic journal "Science" published an online publication entitled "NIN-Like Protein Transcription Factors Regulate Leghemoglobin Genes in Legume Nodules ( Nodule initiating protein transcription factors regulate the expression of leghemoglobin gene in legume root nodules)" research paper

The NLP (NIN-Like Protein) family is a type of plant-specific transcription factor.

The team’s further research revealed that the members of the NLP family, NIN and NLP2, activate the expression of leghemoglobin genes in root nodules by directly binding to the double Nitrate Response Element (dNRE), which is conserved in legumes, to balance the oxygen necessary for nitrogen fixation.

Legumes have existed for tens of millions of years, and scholars in the Zhou Dynasty have noticed its importance to agriculture

This work was mainly done at the Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Link to the paper: https://