The Dynamic Assembly and Resilience of Panicum Root-associated Microbiota

过去十年的一系列关键科学发现揭示了存在于环境中，特别是土壤中的细菌的多样性，这种细菌被称为微生物群。植物与这些不同的细菌群落共生在土壤中，其中的一部分通过无数的过程被招募到植物的根上，并可以为宿主提供有益的服务。例如，根相关细菌可以帮助寄主植物获得关键的营养物质，阻止病原菌的攻击，促进生长和产量。因此，人们对利用植物微生物群来提高农产品的产量和环境弹性有广泛的兴趣。然而，一个障碍是土壤微生物群和宿主植物从中招募与根相关的细菌的环境的复杂性。这使得在自然环境下很难剖析微生物组的组装过程。克服这一障碍的一个有希望的途径是使用受控合成微生物群落，将先前分离和表征的细菌菌株接种到受控系统中。本研究通过实现易追踪、可复制和生态相关的合成微生物群落来研究柳枝根微生物群落的时空动态。柳枝草原产于北美，既可用作生物燃料原料，也可用于土壤修复。研究人员之前的努力是在不同地点培养柳枝草微生物群成员的全面努力。在这里，研究人员将使用这些以前分离的细菌菌株来形成降低复杂性的群落，以研究细菌如何跨越时间和空间在植物根上组装。这些信息将被用来形成一个网络，以推断微生物-微生物之间的相互作用，这可以通过放弃选定的微生物模块来进一步测试。这些结果将使该领域更接近于完全了解根微生物组的组装过程，将以通用柳枝草合成微生物组的形式提供资源，并将与其他柳枝藤/植物微生物生态学家共享，并可能为有益微生物进入农艺系统提供新的途径。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

A series of pivotal scientific discovies over the past decade has shed light on the diversity of bacteria, termed the microbiome, that exist in the environment, particularly in soils. Plants cohabitate soil with these diverse bacterial communities, a subset of which are recruited to plant roots via a myriad of processes and can provide beneficial services to the host. For example, root associated bacteria can help the host plant acquire critical nutrients, thwart pathogen attack, and promote growth and yield. Therefore, there is widespread interest in harnessing the plant microbiome to increase yield and environmental resilience of agricultural commodities. A roadblock, however, is the complexity of the soil microbiome and the environment from which the host plants recruit root-associated bacteria. This makes dissection of the microbiome assembly process difficult under natural settings. A promising avenue to overcome this hurdle is by using controlled synthetic microbial communities, where previously isolated and characterized bacterial strains are inoculated into a controlled system.This research investigates the spatiotemporal dynamics of the switchgrass root microbiome by implementing synthetic microbial communities which are tractable, reproducible, and ecologically relevant. Switchgrass is native to the North America and is used as both a biofuel feedstock and in soil restoration. Previous efforts by the researchers undertook a comprehensive effort to cultivate members of the switchgrass microbiome across diverse locations. Here, the researchers will use these previously isolated bacterial strains to form reduced complexity communities to examine how bacteria assemble both across time and space on plant roots. This information will be used to form a network to infer microbe-microbe interactions which can be further tested by dropping out select microbial modules. These results will bring the field closer to fully understanding the root microbiome assembly process, will provide a resource in the form of a universal switchgrass synthetic microbiome which will be shared with other switchgrass / plant microbial ecologists, and may provide new avenues for beneficial microbe delivery into agronomic systems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.