Host genotype and age shape the leaf and root microbiomes of a wild perennial plant

By Maggie R. Wagner, Derek S. Lundberg, Tijana Del Rio, Susannah Tringe, Jeffery L. Dangl, T. Mitchell-Olds. Nature Communications, 2016

850 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Bacteria living on and in leaves and roots influence many aspects of plant health, so the extent of a plant’s genetic control over its microbiota is of great interest to crop breeders and evolutionary biologists. Laboratory-based studies, because they poorly simulate true environmental heterogeneity, may misestimate or totally miss the influence of certain host genes on the microbiome. Here we report a large-scale field experiment to disentangle the effects of genotype, environment, age and year of harvest on bacterial communities associated with leaves and roots of Boechera stricta (Brassicaceae), a perennial wild mustard. Host genetic control of the microbiome is evident in leaves but not roots, and varies substantially among sites. Microbiome composition also shifts as plants age. Furthermore, a large proportion of leaf bacterial groups are shared with roots, suggesting inoculation from soil. Our results demonstrate how genotype-by-environment interactions contribute to the complexity of microbiome assembly in natural environments. Laboratory-based studies of the effect of plant genotype on plant microbiome composition often do not consider the influence of environmental heterogeneity. Here, Wagner et al. use a large-scale field experiment to assess the extent of host genetic and environmental factors on the microbiome of Boechera stricta.

Subfields: Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1a5f9648a7518899ebab74bba2f2d7ee527a7b64

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Plant Science

1. D. Naylor
2. Devin Coleman-Derr
3. R. Prasanna
4. P. Simoneau
5. A. Shade
6. M. Barret
7. S. Thapa

Citations in the corpus

• Drought Stress and Root-Associated Bacterial Communities (2018, background): “It has already been demonstrated that root and rhizosphere assemblages are affected by plant age and developmental stage (Chaparro et al., 2014; Wagner et al., 2016), indicating that even under control watering conditions there are shifts in the microbiome over time.”
• Prospecting the characteristics and significance of the phyllosphere microbiome (2018, background): “Similarly, Wagner et al. (2016) proposed that the host genotype and age of the plant shape the root and leaf microbiome of Boechera stricta, a wild perennial plant.”
• Microbial interactions within the plant holobiont (2018, neutral): “thaliana [30, 31, 34, 55, 56], and the reciprocal relocation between root- and leafassociated bacterial communities has been further validated using microbiota reconstitution experiments with germ-free A.”
• Assembly of seed-associated microbial communities within and across successive plant generations (2017, background): “Selection by the environment and the host are also important drivers of leaf-associated microbiota composition (Bodenhausen et al. 2014; Horton et al. 2014; Wagner et al. 2016).”