Sorghum Mycobiome
Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) is a grass closely related to sugarcane (Saccharum) and corn (Zea mays). It is the fifth most important cereal crop globally; its use is increasing due to its ability to resist drought. We are studying the role that fungi play in sorghum’s drought resistance and initiated our studies with the obligately mutualistic mycorrhizal fungi found in sorghum roots, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AM fungi). In the semiarid farmland in California, we used the simple, sorghum system with abundant sampling to discover that stochastic forces (drift and stochastic dispersal) act in leaves and roots early in host development and when sorghum is drought stressed, when mycobiomes are small (Gao et al Nat Commun, 2020, 11:34). With sorghum, we also investigated AM fungal communities from seedling emergence to grain maturation, finding that AM fungal succession is 40-fold stronger than seen even in the most recent studies (Gao et al. ISMEJ 2019, 13:214–226). By blending AM fungal data with sorghum transcriptome, we discovered a large-scale depletion in the expression of genes critical to AM symbiosis, with a corresponding drop in AM fungal biomass in the plant root (Varoquaux☯️, Cole☯️, Gao☯️, PNAS, 2019, 116: 27124–27132). Currently, we are blending fungal data with bacterial and sorghum data, aims to understand their coordinated responses.
References
Gao C, Montoya L, Xu L, Madera M, Hollingsworth J, Purdom E, Singan V, Vogel J, Hutmacher RB, Dahlberg JA, Coleman-Derr D, Lemaux PG, Taylor JW*. Fungal community assembly in drought stressed sorghum shows stochasticity, selection, and universal ecological dynamics. Nature Communications, 2020, 11:34
Varoquaux N#, Cole B#, Gao C# (co-first author), Pierroz G, Baker C, Patel D, Madera M, Jeffers T, Hollingsworth J, Sievert J, Yoshinaga Y, Owiti J, Singan V, DeGraaf S, Xu L, Blow M, Harrison MJ, Visel A, Jansson C, Niyogi KK, Hutmacher RB, Coleman-Derr D, O’Malley R, Taylor JW, Dahlberg JA, Vogel JP*, Lemaux PG*, Purdom E*. Transcriptomic analysis of field-droughted sorghum from seedling to maturity reveals biotic and metabolic responses. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019, 116 (52) 27124–27132.
Gao C, Montoya L, Xu L, Madera M, Hollingsworth J, Purdom E, Hutmacher RB, Dahlberg JA, Coleman-Derr D, Lemaux PG, Taylor JW*. Strong succession in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities. The ISME Journal, 2019, 13(1): 214–226.
Xu L, Naylor D, Dong Z, Simmons T, Pierroz G, Hixson K, Kim Y, Zink E, Engbrecht K, Wang Y, Gao C, DeGraaf S, Madera M, Sievert J, Hollingsworth J, Birdseye D, Scheller H, Hutmacher R, Dahlberg J, Jansson C, Taylor J, Lemaux P, Coleman-Derr D. 2018. Drought delays development of the sorghum root microbiome and enriches for monoderm bacteria. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115: E4284–E4293.