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Title: Impact of spatial organization on a novel auxotrophic interaction among soil microbes

Journal Article · · The ISME Journal

Here, a key prerequisite to achieve a deeper understanding of microbial communities and to engineer synthetic ones is to identify the individual metabolic interactions among key species and how these interactions are affected by different environmental factors. Deciphering the physiological basis of species–species and species–environment interactions in spatially organized environments requires reductionist approaches using ecologically and functionally relevant species. To this end, we focus here on a defined system to study the metabolic interactions in a spatial context among the plant-beneficial endophytic fungus Serendipita indica, and the soil-dwelling model bacterium Bacillus subtilis. Focusing on the growth dynamics of S. indica under defined conditions, we identified an auxotrophy in this organism for thiamine, which is a key co-factor for essential reactions in the central carbon metabolism. We found that S. indica growth is restored in thiamine-free media, when co-cultured with B. subtilis. The success of this auxotrophic interaction, however, was dependent on the spatial and temporal organization of the system; the beneficial impact of B. subtilis was only visible when its inoculation was separated from that of S. indica either in time or space. These findings describe a key auxotrophic interaction in the soil among organisms that are shown to be important for plant ecosystem functioning, and point to the potential importance of spatial and temporal organization for the success of auxotrophic interactions. These points can be particularly important for engineering of minimal functional synthetic communities as plant seed treatments and for vertical farming under defined conditions.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-06NA25396
OSTI ID:
1434433
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-18-21554
Journal Information:
The ISME Journal, Vol. 12; ISSN 1751-7362
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 31 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Genome and evolution of the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus Diversispora epigaea (formerly Glomus versiforme ) and its bacterial endosymbionts journal October 2018
Disentangling strictly self-serving mutations from win-win mutations in a mutualistic microbial community journal June 2019
Manganese Oxide Biomineralization Provides Protection against Nitrite Toxicity in a Cell-Density-Dependent Manner journal January 2019
Uncovering and resolving challenges of quantitative modeling in a simplified community of interacting cells journal February 2019
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