Abstract
Plant associated microbiomes are known to confer fitness advantages to the host. Understanding how plant factors including biochemical traits influence host associated microbiome assembly could facilitate the development of microbiome-mediated solutions for sustainable plant production. Here, we examined microbial community structures of a set of well-characterized Arabidopsis thaliana mutants disrupted in metabolic pathways for the production of glucosinolates, flavonoids, or a number of defense signalling molecules. A. thaliana lines were grown in a natural soil and maintained under greenhouse conditions for 4 weeks before collection of roots for bacterial and fungal community profiling. We found distinct relative abundances and diversities of bacterial and fungal communities assembled in the individual A. thaliana mutants compared to their parental lines. Bacterial and fungal genera were mostly enriched than depleted in secondary metabolite and defense signaling mutants, except for flavonoid mutations on fungi communities. Bacterial genera Azospirillum and Flavobacterium were significantly enriched in most of the glucosinolate, flavonoid and signalling mutants while the fungal taxa Sporobolomyces and Emericellopsis were enriched in several glucosinolates and signalling mutants. Whilst the present study revealed marked differences in microbiomes of Arabidopsis mutants and their parental lines, it is suggestive that unknown enzymatic and pleiotropic activities of the mutated genes could contribute to the identified host-associated microbiomes. Notwithstanding, this study revealed interesting gene-microbiota links, and thus represents valuable resource data for selecting candidate A. thaliana mutants for analyzing the links between host genetics and the associated microbiome.
Highlights
Plants interact with a vast diversity of microorganisms both above- and belowground, and the outcomes of those interactions may be either beneficial or detrimental to the plant
We studied microbiome composition in Arabidopsis plants carrying mutations in specific steps of the glucosinolates (GLS), flavonoids (FLV) and defense signaling molecules (DSM) pathways (Fig 1A–1C)
The bacterial community profiling yielded a total of 717,379 sequence reads clustering into 6,471 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) while the fungal profiling yielded 703,675 sequences which clustered into 344 OTUs after quality filtering
Summary
Plants interact with a vast diversity of microorganisms both above- and belowground, and the outcomes of those interactions may be either beneficial or detrimental to the plant. The plant employs a range of strategies such as the action of constitutive and/or induced. Arabidopsis microbiomes are affected by mutations in defense metabolite and signalling pathways. NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) database under the accession number PRJNA579829
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.