Plant microbiome blueprints

• Published in: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 349; no. 6250; pp. 788 - 789
• Main Authors: Haney, Cara H, Ausubel, Frederick M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington The American Association for the Advancement of Science 21.08.2015
• Subjects: Animals; Antiinfectives and antibacterials; Arabidopsis thaliana; Bacteria; Consistency; Digestive system; Genetics; Immune system; Immune systems; Microbiology; Microorganisms; Petals
• ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.aad0092

Just as the number of petals in a flower or the number of limbs on an animal follow predictable rules, host-associated microbial communities ("microbiomes") have predictable compositions. At the level of bacterial phylum, the structure of the host-associated microbiome is conserved across individuals of a species (1, 2). The consistency and predictability of host-associated microbiomes-like many of the phenotypes of a particular multicellular organism-suggest that they too may, in part, be under the regulation of a genetic blueprint. Indeed, evidence in animals shows that through production of broad-spectrum antimicrobials, the innate immune system shapes the composition of the gut microbiome (3, 4). On page 860 of this issue, Lebeis et al. (5) reveal a critical role of the plant hormone salicylic acid in determining the higher-order organization of the root-associated microbiome of the reference plant Arabidopsis thaliana.