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Effects of organic acids on the chemotaxis profiles and biocontrol traits of antagonistic bacterial endophytes against root-rot disease in Panax notoginseng

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Abstract

Understanding the role of chemotaxis in ecological interactions between plants and microbes in the rhizosphere is necessary to optimize biocontrol strategies targeting plant soil-borne diseases. Therefore, we examined and profiled the antagonistic endophytic bacteria (AEB) population with chemotaxis potential in the medicinal plant Panax notoginseng using a cheA gene-based approach coupled with 16S rRNA sequencing. Phylogenetic analysis of the chemotactic AEB (CAEB) community in P. notoginseng enabled the identification of 56 CAEB strains affiliated with 30 species of Actinobacteria, Firmicutes, and Proteobacteria; Firmicutes, especially Bacillus, were predominant. We then systematically quantified the chemotactic response profiles of CAEB toward five organic acid (OA) attractants: citric acid, fumaric acid (FA), malic acid, oxalic acid, and succinic acid. Further hierarchical cluster analysis revealed that the chemotaxis of CAEB to the same attractant exhibited different patterns among not only genera but also species and even strains of the same species. Following chemotaxis and hierarchical analysis, we selected the strongest chemoattractant, fumaric acid (FA), as the target for evaluating the effects of OAs on the representative CAEB strain Bacillus amyloliquefaciens subsp. plantarum YP1. Application of FA significantly stimulated the chemotaxis ability and growth of YP1, and increased the transcript levels of cheA and biocontrol-related genes in YP1. This is the first study to characterise the diversity of chemotaxis profiles toward OAs in natural bacterial assemblages of P. notoginseng and to highlight how FA promotes the biocontrol-related traits of P. notoginseng-associated CAEB.

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Data availability

The 16S rRNA gene sequences that support the findings of this study have been deposited in GenBank with the accession numbers listed in Table 1 shown in the manuscript.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the NSFC (31960022, 32170131, 31870091), the Department of Science and Technology of Yunnan Province (202001BB050072, 2019ZG00901, YNWR-CYJS-2019-042).

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  1. Li Ma and Wu-Qin Wang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory for Conservation and Utilization of Bio-Resources in Yunnan, Yunnan University, The Cuihu North Road No. 2, Kunming, 650091, China

    Li Ma, Wu-Qin Wang, Rui Shi, Xue-Mei Zhang, Xin Li, Yu-Sen Yang & Ming He Mo

  2. Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Microbial Resources, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, China

    Ming He Mo

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LM wrote the manuscript and funding acquisition, designed the article. W-QW analysed data, drew the figures of this manuscript. RS and X-MZ revised the manuscript, collected the literature, XL and Y-SY added references and participated in revising the manuscript. MHM contributed to the writing of the manuscript, suggested and added references, critically revised the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ming He Mo.

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Ma, L., Wang, WQ., Shi, R. et al. Effects of organic acids on the chemotaxis profiles and biocontrol traits of antagonistic bacterial endophytes against root-rot disease in Panax notoginseng. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 114, 1771–1789 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10482-021-01636-1

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