The Dynamic Assembly and Resilience of Panicum Root-associated Microbiota

在过去的十年中，一系列关键的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，称为微生物组。植物与这些不同的细菌群落共存，其中一个子集通过无数的过程被招募到植物根部，并可以为宿主提供有益的服务。例如，根相关细菌可以帮助宿主植物获得关键营养素，阻止病原体攻击，并促进生长和产量。因此，人们对利用植物微生物组来提高农业商品的产量和环境复原力产生了广泛的兴趣。然而，一个障碍是土壤微生物组的复杂性和宿主植物招募根相关细菌的环境。这使得在自然环境下难以解剖微生物组组装过程。克服这一障碍的一个有前途的途径是通过使用控制的合成微生物群落，以前分离和表征的细菌菌株接种到一个受控system.This研究调查的时空动态柳枝稷根微生物通过实施合成的微生物群落是易处理的，可重复的，生态相关的。柳枝稷原产于北美，被用作生物燃料原料和土壤修复。研究人员先前的努力进行了全面的努力，在不同的地点培养柳枝稷微生物组的成员。在这里，研究人员将使用这些先前分离的细菌菌株来形成复杂性降低的群落，以研究细菌如何在植物根部跨时间和空间组装。这些信息将用于形成一个网络，以推断微生物-微生物相互作用，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充分理解根微生物组组装过程，将提供一种通用柳枝稷合成微生物组形式的资源，该资源将与其他柳枝稷/植物微生物生态学家共享，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的学术价值和更广泛的影响评审标准。

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.