Host-association as major driver of microbiome structure and composition in Red Sea seagrass ecosystems
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Accepted manuscript
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2021-11-22
Type
ArticleKAUST Department
Red Sea Research Centre (RSRC) and Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Thuwal 23955 Saudi ArabiaBiological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) Division
Marine Science Program
Red Sea Research Center (RSRC)
Date
2020-11-22Embargo End Date
2021-11-22Submitted Date
2020-03-17Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/666099
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The role of the microbiome in sustaining seagrasses has recently been highlighted. However, our understanding of the seagrass microbiome lacks behind that of other organisms. Here, we analyze the endophytic and total bacterial communities of leaves, rhizomes, and roots of six Red Sea seagrass species and their sediments. The structure of seagrass bacterial communities revealed that the 1% most abundant OTUs accounted for 87.9 and 74.8 % of the total numbers of reads in sediment and plant tissue samples, respectively. We found taxonomically distinct bacterial communities in vegetated and bare sediments. Yet, our results suggest that lifestyle (i.e. free-living or host-association) is the main driver of bacterial community composition. Seagrass bacterial communities were tissue- and species-specific and differed from those of surrounding sediments. We identified OTUs belonging to genera related to N and S cycles in roots, and members of Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Firmicutes phyla as particularly enriched in root endosphere. The finding of highly similar OTUs in well-defined sub-clusters by network analysis suggests the co-occurrence of highly connected key members within Red Sea seagrass bacterial communities. These results provide key information towards the understanding of the role of microorganisms in seagrass ecosystem functioning framed under the seagrass holobiont concept.Citation
Garcias-Bonet, N., Eguíluz, V. M., Díaz-Rúa, R., & Duarte, C. M. (2020). Host-association as major driver of microbiome structure and composition in Red Sea seagrass ecosystems. Environmental Microbiology. doi:10.1111/1462-2920.15334Publisher
WileyJournal
Environmental MicrobiologyAdditional Links
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1462-2920.15334ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1111/1462-2920.15334