Abstract

Sphingomonas is one of the most abundant bacterial genera in the phyllosphere of wild Arabidopsis thaliana, but relative to Pseudomonas, the ecology of Sphingomonas and its interaction with plants is poorly described. We analyzed the genomic features of over 400 Sphingomonas isolates collected from local A. thaliana populations, which revealed much higher intergenomic diversity than for the considerably more uniform Pseudomonas isolates found in the same host populations. Variation in Sphingomonas plasmid complements and additional genomic features suggest high adaptability of this genus, and the widespread presence of protein secretion systems hints at frequent biotic interactions. While some of the isolates showed plant-protective phenotypes in lab tests, this was a rare trait. To begin to understand the extent of strain sharing across alternate hosts, we employed amplicon sequencing and a bulk-culturing metagenomics approach on both A. thaliana and neighboring plants. Our data reveal that both Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas thrive on other diverse plant hosts, but that Sphingomonas is a poor in or dead leaves.

Keywords

Sphingomonas; Pseudomonas; phyllosphere; genomics; interactions

Published in

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
2022, Volume: 119, number: 52, article number: e2211881119
Publisher: NATL ACAD SCIENCES

SLU Authors

• Lundberg, Derek

  • Department of Plant Biology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology

UKÄ Subject classification

Microbiology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2211881119

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/122830