Project description:Plants and rhizosphere microbes rely closely on each other, with plants supplying carbon to bacteria in root exudates, and bacteria mobilizing soil-bound phosphate for plant nutrition. When the phosphate supply becomes limiting for plant growth, the composition of root exudation changes, affecting rhizosphere microbial communities and microbially-mediated nutrient fluxes. To evaluate how plant phosphate deprivation affects rhizosphere bacteria, Lolium perenne seedlings were root-inoculated with Pseudomonas aeruginosa 7NR, and grown in axenic microcosms under different phosphate regimes (330 uM vs 3-6 uM phosphate). The effect of biological nutrient limitation was examined by DNA microarray studies of rhizobacterial gene expression.
Project description:Development of cereal crops with high nitrogen-use efficiency (NUE) is a priority for worldwide agriculture. In addition to conventional plant breeding and genetic engineering, the use of the plant microbiome offers another approach to improve crop NUE. To gain insight into the bacterial communities associated with sorghum lines that differ in NUE, a field experiment was designed comparing 24 diverse sorghum lines under sufficient and deficient nitrogen (N). Amplicon sequencing and untargeted gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) were used to characterize the bacterial communities and the root metabolome associated with sorghum genotypes varying in sensitivity to low N. We demonstrated that N stress and sorghum type (energy, sweet, and grain sorghum) significantly impacted the root-associated bacterial communities and root metabolite composition of sorghum. We found a positive correlation between sorghum NUE and bacterial richness and diversity in the rhizosphere. The greater alpha diversity in high NUE lines was associated with the decreased abundance of a dominant bacterial taxa, Pseudomonas. Multiple strong correlations were detected between root metabolites and rhizosphere bacterial communities in response to low-N stress. This indicates that the shift in the sorghum microbiome due to low-N is associated with the root metabolites of the host plant. Taken together, our findings suggest that host genetic regulation of root metabolites plays a role in defining the root-associated microbiome of sorghum genotypes differing in NUE and tolerance to low-N stress.
Project description:Understanding the environmental factors that shape microbial communities is crucial, especially in extreme environments, like Antarctica. Two main forces were reported to influence Antarctic soil microbes: birds and plants. Both birds and plants are currently undergoing unprecedented changes in their distribution and abundance due to global warming. However, we need to clearly understand the relationship between plants, birds and soil microorganisms. We therefore collected rhizosphere and bulk soils from six different sampling sites subjected to different levels of bird influence and colonized by Colobanthus quitensis and Deschampsia antarctica in the Admiralty Bay, King George Island, Maritime Antarctic. Microarray and qPCR assays targeting 16S rRNA genes of specific taxa were used to assess microbial community structure, composition and abundance and analyzed with a range of soil physico-chemical parameters. The results indicated significant rhizosphere effects in four out of the six sites, including areas with different levels of bird influence. Acidobacteria were significantly more abundant in soils with little bird influence (low nitrogen) and in bulk soil. In contrast, Actinobacteria were significantly more abundant in the rhizosphere of both plant species. At two of the sampling sites under strong bird influence (penguin colonies), Firmicutes were significantly more abundant in D. antarctica rhizosphere but not in C. quitensis rhizosphere. The Firmicutes were also positively and significantly correlated to the nitrogen concentrations in the soil. We conclude that the microbial communities in Antarctic soils are driven both by bird and plants, and that the effect is taxa-specific.
Project description:Arsenic (As) bioavailability in the rice rhizosphere is influenced by many microbial interactions, particularly by metal-transforming functional groups at the root-soil interface. This study was conducted to examine As-transforming microbes and As-speciation in the rice rhizosphere compartments, in response to two different water management practices (continuous and intermittently flooded), established on fields with high to low soil-As concentration. Microbial functional gene composition in the rhizosphere and root-plaque compartments were characterized using the GeoChip 4.0 microarray. Arsenic speciation and concentrations were analyzed in the rhizosphere soil, root-plaque, porewater and grain samples. Results indicated that intermittent flooding significantly altered As-speciation in the rhizosphere, and reduced methyl-As and AsIII concentrations in the pore water, root-plaque and rice grain. Ordination and taxonomic analysis of detected gene-probes indicated that root-plaque and rhizosphere assembled significantly different metal-transforming functional groups. Taxonomic non-redundancy was evident, suggesting that As-reduction, -oxidation and -methylation processes were performed by different microbial groups. As-transformation was coupled to different biogeochemical cycling processes establishing functional non-redundancy of rice-rhizosphere microbiome in response to both rhizosphere compartmentalization and experimental treatments. This study confirmed diverse As-biotransformation at root-soil interface and provided novel insights on their responses to water management, which can be applied for mitigating As-bioavailability and accumulation in rice grains.
Project description:Microbial communities in the rhizosphere make significant contributions to crop health and nutrient cycling. However, their ability to perform important biogeochemical processes remains uncharacterized. Important functional genes, which characterize the rhizosphere microbial community, were identified to understand metabolic capabilities in the maize rhizosphere using GeoChip 3.0-based functional gene array method.
Project description:This study evaluated the ammonium oxidizing communities (COA) associated with a potato crop (Solanum phureja) rhizosphere soil in the savannah of Bogotá (Colombia) by examining the presence and abundance of amoA enzyme genes and transcripts by qPCR and next-generation sequence analysis. amoA gene abundance could not be quantified by qPCR due to problems inherent in the primers; however, the melting curve analysis detected increased fluorescence for Bacterial communities but not for Archaeal communities. Transcriptome analysis by next-generation sequencing revealed that the majority of reads mapped to ammonium-oxidizing Archaea, suggesting that this activity is primarily governed by the microbial group of the Crenarchaeota phylum. In contrast,a lower number of reads mapped to ammonia-oxidizing bacteria.