Science
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/microscopic-hitchhiker-friend-both-plants-and-humans?utm_campaign=news_daily_2021-03-22&et_rid=389253831&et_cid=3708750

By Elizabeth PennisiMar. 22, 2021 , 12:45 PSoil bacteria called Streptomyces are the guardian angels of the microbial world: They produce antibiotics that humans depend on and protect plants from harmful microbes. But because neither the bacteria nor their spores can move themselves around, researchers have long puzzled over how they find the plants they protect.

Now scientists have discovered that the microbe’s dormant spores (brown) hitch rides on the whiplike appendages—flagella—of mobile soil microbes (blue) heading for plant roots. The journey is an essential part of Streptomyces’ life cycle, the researchers report this month in The ISME Journal: Multidisciplinary Journal of Microbial Ecology.