Abstract. Phage therapy offers a promising strategy against bacterial pathogens in medicine and agriculture, but the rise of phage-resistant bacteria prese

A sequential propagation strategy shows how the microbes initially on seeds are key to building complex, reproducible and heritable plant microbiomes.

A sequential propagation strategy shows how the microbes initially on seeds are key to building complex, reproducible and heritable plant microbiomes.

Microbial communities play a crucial role in supporting plant health and productivity. Reproducible, natural plant-associated microbiomes can help disentangle microbial dynamics across time and space. Here, using a sequential propagation strategy, we generated a complex and reproducible wheat rhizosphere microbiome (RhizCom) to study successional dynamics and interactions between the soil and heritable seed-borne rhizosphere microbiomes (SbRB) in a microcosm. Using 16S rRNA sequencing and genome-resolved shotgun metagenomics, we find that SbRB surpassed native soil microbes as the dominant rhizosphere-associated microbiome source. SbRB genomes were enriched in host-associated traits including degradation of key saccharide (niche partitioning) and cross-feeding interactions that supported partner strains (niche facilitation). In vitro co-culture experiments confirmed that helper SbRB strains facilitated the growth of partner bacteria on disaccharides as sole carbon source. These results reveal the importance of seed microbiota dynamics in microbial succession and community assembly, which could inform strategies for crop microbiome manipulation.

Nature Communications - Engineering multicellular consortia, where information processing is distributed across specialized cell types, offers a promising strategy for implementing sophisticated...

Plants host diverse microbes that shape their health and growth. New research shows that seed-borne bacteria dominate the wheat rhizosphere, driving microbiome assembly via niche partitioning and faci...

A sequential propagation strategy shows how the microbes initially on seeds are key to building complex, reproducible and heritable plant microbiomes.

A sequential propagation strategy shows how the microbes initially on seeds are key to building complex, reproducible and heritable plant microbiomes.

Nature Microbiology - A sequential propagation strategy shows how the microbes initially on seeds are key to building complex, reproducible and heritable plant microbiomes.

Nature - Imaging study reveals how fungal networks are constructed.

Microbial communities play a critical role in supporting plant health and productivity, making the ability to obtain reproducible plant-associated microbiomes an essential asset for experimentally…