Copolymers enhance selective bacterial community colonization for potential root zone applications

Abstract

Managing the impact of anthropogenic and climate induced stress on plant growth remains a challenge. Here we show that polymeric hydrogels, which maintain their hydrous state, can be designed to exploit functional interactions with soil microorganisms. This microbial enhancement may mitigate biotic and abiotic stresses limiting productivity. The presence of mannan chains within synthetic polyacrylic acid (PAA) enhanced the dynamics and selectivity of bacterial ingress in model microbial systems and soil microcosms. Pseudomonas fluorescens exhibiting high mannan binding adhesins showed higher ingress and localised microcolonies throughout the polymeric network. In contrast, ingress of Bacillus subtilis, lacking adhesins, was unaltered by mannan showing motility comparable to bulk liquids. Incubation within microcosms of an agricultural soil yielded hydrogel populations significantly increased from the corresponding soil. Bacterial diversity was markedly higher in mannan containing hydrogels compared to both control polymer and soil, indicating enhanced selectivity towards microbial families that contain plant beneficial species. Here we propose functional polymers applied to the potential root zone which can positively influence rhizobacteria colonization and potentially plant growth as a new approach to stress tolerance.

Species abundance information improves sequence taxonomy classification accuracy

“…q2-clawback uses redbiom 25 (https://github.com/biocore/redbiom) to access Qiita. Data from the following Qiita studies were used: 11113 26 , 11444, 1716, 10369 27 , 990 28 , 2080, 1713, 894, 1289, 1883, 1673, 1288, 10353, 2192 29 , 10323, 678, 1773, 662, 1799, 864, 1481, 1024 30 , 1064, 2182, 10934, 1674, 1795 31 , 10273, 10283 32 , 10422 33 , 804, 10308, 1056 34 , 2382 30 , 1240, 889, 1041, 1717, 1222, 11149, 11669, 807 35 , 10245, 1711, 1721, 910, 1001, 895, 550 36 , 1747 37 , 713 38 , 755, 861, 958 39 , 11161 40 , 11154 41 , 945, 723, 1715, 1714, 10798.…”

Life at the borderlands: microbiomes of interfaces critical to One Health

“…Many bacterial pathogens including Vibrio cholerae, P. aeruginosa , and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium have Type VI secretion systems that are expressed during bacterial colonization and deliver various types of virulence factors, increasing pathogen fitness and facilitating adhesion to host cells (Hachani et al 2016 , Logan et al 2018 , Soria-Bustos et al 2020 ). Understanding the role adhesins play during attachment offers possibilities to alter colonization behaviour and select for desirable taxa (Pham et al 2017 ).…”

“…Targeted methods for integration of synthetic genetic material include conjugative broad host range (BHR) plasmids, integrative and conjugative elements (ICE), chassis-independent recombinase-assisted genome engineering (CRAGE), environmental transformation sequencing and DNA-editing all-in-one RNA-guided CRISPR–Cas transposase (ET-Seq + DART; Rubin et al 2022 ), and MAGIC (metabolomics alteration of gut microbiome in situ conjugation). Applied examples include functionalized soil amendments (Pham et al 2017 , Mathes et al 2020 ), transfer of IncP plasmids from diverse hosts to multiple bacterial phyla in a soil community (Klümper et al 2015 ), mini-ICE-mediated delivery of a biosynthetic gene cluster to a synthetic soil community in situ and genomic modification in 297 microbial species within the murine gut (Brophy et al 2018 , Ronda et al 2019 ). Due to their novelty and practical limitations associated with the complexity of the methods, widespread application of these techniques to the key microbial interfaces under review is still limited.…”

Prospects of Hydrogels in Agriculture for Enhancing Crop and Water Productivity under Water Deficit Condition

“…However, nitrogen-fixing microbes can benefit from the application of the hydrogel [65]. The imposition of functional polymers in the hydrogels (mannan-containing hydrogels) and its application in the potential root zone could positively influence the rhizobacteria colonization and plant growth and is emerging as a new tool to stress tolerance and crop production [66]. International Journal of Polymer Science…”