Speaker
Description
Plants are associated with a diverse microbiome consisting of bacteria, fungi, and protists that play a crucial role in establishing a stable microbial community that contributes to the health of their host under atypical environmental stresses. Although these microbial communities are co-evolved with plants in either beneficial, commensal, or pathogenic lifestyles, how each member cooperates and contributes to shaping active microbial communities is not clear. In our study, we aimed to understand the role of the stable core leaf microbial community. We characterized culturable representatives' microbes, including bacteria and yeast, to design a complex Synthetic Community (SynCom), resolve microbe-microbe interactions, and investigate their protective outcome under pathogen perturbation. To study their beneficial traits as leaf microbes, we sequenced their genomes and performed in-silico mining of genes/gene clusters responsible for leaf adaptive, protective, and probiotic traits. Genes encoding traits such as colonization, biofilm formation, production of phytohormones, antimicrobials, lytic enzymes, and diverse secondary metabolites were distributed in SynCom microbes with differential abundance, providing insights into their nature of the role and benefit in the microbial community and to the plant. Further, we delved deep into SynCom members and identify key microbe that has a fitness advantage and a protective role under in-vitro and in-planta conditions. We identified biofilm genes/gene cluster abundance and in-vitro biofilm formation ability as an essential factor favoring the functionally effective role of key microbe in the community. Insights gained from this exploration will be useful in designing functionally efficient SynComs for plant protection.
