Breeding of microbiomes conferring salt tolerance to plants

作者：Caio Guilherme Pereira, Joseph Edwards, Albina Khasanova, Alexis Carlson, Vanessa Brisson, Estelle Schaefer, Tijana Glavina del Rio, Susannah G. Tringe, John P. Vogel, David L. Des Marais, Thomas Juenger, Ulrich G. Mueller · 发表于：Microbiome · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1186/s40168-025-02261-0 · 被引用次数：7 · 研究领域：Plant-Microbe Interactions and Immunity、Plant Pathogenic Bacteria Studies、Legume Nitrogen Fixing Symbiosis

BACKGROUND: Microbiome breeding through host-mediated selection is a technique to artificially select for microbiomes conferring beneficial properties to plants. Using a systematic selection protocol that maximises the heritability of microbiome effects, transmission fidelity, and microbiome stability through multiple selection cycles, we previously developed root-associated microbial communities conferring sodium and aluminium tolerance to Brachypodium distachyon, a model for cereal crops. Here, we explore the physiological mechanisms underlying our selected microbiomes' effect on plant fitness and analyse how our selection protocol shaped the composition and structure of these microbiomes. We analysed the effects of our selected microbiomes on plant fitness and tissue-nutrient concentration, then used 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing to examine microbial community composition and co-occurrence network patterns. RESULTS: Our sodium-selected microbiomes reduced leaf sodium concentration by ~ 50%, whereas the aluminium-selected microbiomes had no effect on leaf-tissue nutrient concentration, suggesting different mechanisms underlying the microbiome-mediated stress tolerance. By testing the selected microbiomes in a cross-fostering experiment, we show that our artificially selected microbiomes attained (a) ecological robustness contributing to transplantability (i.e. inheritance) of microbiome-encoded effects between plants; and (b) network features identifying key bacteria promoti...