RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Protective host-dependent antagonism among <em>Pseudomonas</em> in the <em>Arabidopsis</em> phyllosphere
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.04.08.438928
DO 10.1101/2021.04.08.438928
A1 Or Shalev
A1 Talia L. Karasov
A1 Derek S. Lundberg
A1 Haim Ashkenazy
A1 Detlef Weigel
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/04/13/2021.04.08.438928.abstract
AB The plant microbiome is a rich biotic environment, comprising numerous taxa. The community structure of these colonizers is constrained by multiple factors, including host-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions, as well as the interplay between the two. While much can be learned from pairwise relationships between individual hosts and microbes, or individual microbes with themselves, the ensemble of interrelations between the host and microbial consortia may lead to different outcomes that are not easily predicted from the individual interactions. Their study can thus provide new insights into the complex relationship between plants and microbes. Of particular importance is how strain-specific such plant-microbe-microbe interactions are, and how they eventually affect plant health. Here, we test strain-level interactions in the phyllosphere between groups of co-existing commensal and pathogenic Pseudomonas among each other and with A. thaliana, by employing synthetic communities of genome-barcoded isolates. We found that commensal Pseudomonas prompted a host response leading to a selective inhibition of a specific pathogenic lineage, resulting in plant protection. The extent of plant protection, however, was dependent on plant genotype, indicating that these effects are host-mediated. There were similar genotype-specific effects on the microbe side, as we could pinpoint an individual Pseudomonas isolate as the predominant cause for this differential interaction. Collectively, our work highlights how within-species genetic differences on both the host and microbe side can have profound effects on host-microbe-microbe dynamics. The paradigm that we have established provides a platform for the study of host-dependent microbe-microbe competition and cooperation in the A. thaliana-Pseudomonas system.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.