Abstract

Plant-associated bacteria can establish mutualistic relationships with plants to support plant health. Plant tissues represent heterogeneous niches with distinct characteristics and may thus host distinct microbial populations. The objectives of this study are to investigate the bacterial communities associated with two medicinally and commercially important plant species; Ginkgo biloba and Panax quinquefolius using high Throughput Sequencing (HTS) of 16S rRNA gene, and to evaluate the extent of heterogeneity in bacterial communities associated with different plant niches. Alpha diversity showed that number of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) varied significantly by tissue type. Beta diversity revealed that the composition of bacterial communities varied between tissue types. In Ginkgo biloba and Panax quinquefolius, 13% and 49% of OTUs, respectively, were ubiquitous in leaf, stem and root. Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria and Acidobacteria were the most abundant phyla in Ginkgo biloba while Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, Plantomycetes and Acidobacteria were the most abundant phyla in Panax quinquefolius. Functional prediction of these bacterial communities using MicrobiomeAnalyst revealed 5843 and 6251 KEGG orthologs in Ginkgo biloba and Panax quinquefolius, respectively. A number of these KEGG pathways were predicted at significantly different levels between tissues. These findings demonstrate the heterogeneity, niche specificity and functional diversity of plant-associated bacteria.

Highlights

  • Plant-associated bacteria can establish mutualistic relationships with plants to support plant health

  • The objective of this study is to investigate the bacterial communities associated with two important medicinal plant species; Ginkgo biloba and Panax quinquefolius

  • Following removal of chimeric reads, 1382861 reads from Ginkgo biloba (GB) samples were assigned to 4100 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and 1240075 reads from Panax quinquefolius (PQ) samples were assigned to 4195 OTUs

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Summary

Introduction

Plant-associated bacteria can establish mutualistic relationships with plants to support plant health. A number of these KEGG pathways were predicted at significantly different levels between tissues These findings demonstrate the heterogeneity, niche specificity and functional diversity of plant-associated bacteria. Each niche has its distinct characteristics and may host its distinct microbial ­population[5] This heterogeneity may drive the tissue specificity of some plant associated bacterial ­communities[6]. The diversity and distribution of plant associated bacteria in the different plant tissues are not well understood with only few studies that investigated the spatial variation of bacterial communities within p­ lants[5,7]. Taxa in the symbiotic relationship with ­plants[5] It can help understand the role that plant characteristics and environmental factors play in shaping this spatial variation of associated bacteria

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