RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Novel bacterial lineages associated with boreal moss species
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 219659
DO 10.1101/219659
A1 Hannah Holland-Moritz
A1 Julia Stuart
A1 Lily R. Lewis
A1 Samantha Miller
A1 Michelle C. Mack
A1 Stuart F. McDaniel
A1 Noah Fierer
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/11/16/219659.abstract
AB Mosses are critical components of boreal ecosystems where they typically account for a large proportion of net primary productivity and harbor diverse bacterial communities that can be the major source of biologically-fixed nitrogen in these ecosystems. Despite their ecological importance, we have limited understanding of how microbial communities vary across boreal moss species and the extent to which local environmental conditions may influence the composition of these bacterial communities. We used marker gene sequencing to analyze bacterial communities associated with eight boreal moss species collected near Fairbanks, AK USA. We found that host identity was more important than site in determining bacterial community composition and that mosses harbor diverse lineages of potential N2- fixers as well as an abundance of novel taxa assigned to understudied bacterial phyla (including candidate phylum WPS-2). We performed shotgun metagenomic sequencing to assemble genomes from the WPS-2 candidate phylum and found that these moss-associated bacteria are likely anoxygenic phototrophs capable of carbon fixation via RuBisCo with an ability to utilize byproducts of photorespiration from hosts via a glyoxylate shunt. These results give new insights into the metabolic capabilities of understudied bacterial lineages that associate with mosses and the importance of plant hosts in shaping their microbiomes.