Rhizosphere-colonizing bacteria persist in the protist microbiome.

ABSTRACT: Soils contain diverse predatory protists that affect the abundance and behavior of rhizosphere bacteria, including bacteria that may benefit plant health. Protists harbor their own bacterial microbiomes, and we previously observed that plants inoculated with protists harbored rhizosphere bacteria similar to those in the protist inoculum. To determine how protist microbiomes affect the rhizosphere, we profiled the bacteria of eight diverse rhizosphere protist isolates after 2 years of laboratory culture. We then compared the protist culture microbiomes to maize rhizosphere communities 6 weeks after protist inoculation. Introduction of protists enriched 13 protist-associated bacterial amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) in the rhizosphere, which comprised ~10% of the rhizosphere bacterial comm

SUBMITTER: Taerum SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12108058 | biostudies-literature | 2025 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature