Phylogenetic lineages in Vanguerieae (Rubiaceae) associated with Burkholderia bacteria in sub‐Saharan Africa

Abstract

The association is not obligate from the bacterial point of view and is considered a loose and recent interaction, which is demonstrated by the fact that there is no evidence for coevolution. The geographical distribution of the association is restricted by the distributional range of the host plants covering the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.

Identification and Characterisation of Endophytic Bacteria from Coconut (Cocos nucifera) Tissue Culture

“…2011 ) using 1000 bootstrap replicates as suggested by Jasim et al (2014) and Kumar et al . (2015) and Maximum Likelihood Method as suggested by Verstraete et al . (2013) using 100 bootstrap replicates.…”

“…The contig sequences were aligned using ClustalW (Thompson et al 1994) in the MEGA6 (Tamura et al 2011) software. After alignment, a phylogenetic tree showing the relationship between the bacterial isolates was constructed using the Neighbour-Joining Method (Tamura et al 2011) using 1000 bootstrap replicates as suggested by Jasim et al (2014) and Kumar et al (2015) and Maximum Likelihood Method as suggested by Verstraete et al (2013) using 100 bootstrap replicates. Table 1 shows the results of the Gram staining, catalase test, citrate test, triple sugar iron slant, and endospore staining.…”

Members of the genus Burkholderia: good and bad guys

“…Although these strains have mainly been isolated from Mimosa species, recent work showed that some Burkholderia strains can also nodulate fynbos legumes in South Africa 39 – 43 . Some plant genera of the Rubiaceae and Primulaceae families carry members of the genus Burkholderia within leaf nodules 44 – 47 . This unique association is the only known example of an obligate plant-bacterium symbiosis with both partners being unable to exist outside the symbiotic association.…”

Bacterial Leaf Nodule Symbiosis in Flowering Plants

“…The identified symbionts do not form a monophyletic clade corresponding to their host plant genera. The clade consists of symbiotic bacteria from all nodulated rubiaceous hosts that also includes the endophytes identified from non-nodulated Psychotria and another non-nodulated rubiaceous genus, Globulostylis and some environmental species [14,15,[19][20][21][22][23] (also see Section 3.3). Other non-nodulated Burkholderia species in rubiaceous species together with some plant-associated beneficial and environmental (PBE) species form a monophyletic group.…”

“…Bacterial leaf endophytes are also found in non-nodulated Rubiaceae [64,65], as well as in many angiosperms (such as in Vitis [66]). It is interesting that the endophytic Burkholderia was now known being widespread in the leaves of five non-nodulated rubiaceous genera, which are all in the tribe Vanguerieae of Rubiaceae [20,21,23]. None of these host plants showed an external sign of infection.…”