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The genus Caulobacter and its role in plant microbiomes

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Abstract

Recent omics approaches have revealed the prevalent microbial taxa that constitute the microbiome of various plant species. Across global scales and environmental conditions, strains belonging to the bacterial genus Caulobacter have consistently been found in association with various plant species. Aligned with agroecological relevance and biotechnological advances, many scientific communications have demonstrated that several Caulobacter strains (spanning several Caulobacter species) harbor the potential to enhance plant biomass for various plant species ranging from Arabidopsis to Citrullus and Zea mays. In the past several years, co-occurrence data have driven mechanistically resolved communications about select Caulobacter–plant interactions. Given the long-standing history of Caulobacter as a model organism for cell cycle regulation, genetic studies, and the prevalence of Caulobacter species in various plant microbiomes, the genus Caulobacter offers researchers a unique opportunity to leverage for investigating plant–microbe interactions and realizing targeted biotechnological applications. In this review, recent developments regarding Caulobacter–plant interactions are presented in terms of model utility for future biotechnological investigations.

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Funding

This work was funded in part by a National Science Foundation PRFB Grant (2109481) awarded to LB. The funders did not contribute to the design of the experiments, data collection, analyses, decision to publish, or the preparation of the manuscript.

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  1. Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Louis Berrios

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  1. Louis Berrios
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LB: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, software, supervision, validation, visualization, writing (original draft), writing (review and editing).

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Correspondence to Louis Berrios.

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Berrios, L. The genus Caulobacter and its role in plant microbiomes. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 38, 43 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-022-03237-0

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