Effect of Ionizing Radiation on the Bacterial and Fungal Endophytes of the Halophytic Plant Kalidium schrenkianum

Abstract

Endophytic bacteria and fungi colonize plants that grow in various types of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Our study investigates the communities of endophytic bacteria and fungi of halophyte Kalidium schrenkianum growing in stressed habitats with ionizing radiation. The geochemical factors and radiation (at low, medium, high level and control) both affected the structure of endophytic communities. The bacterial class Actinobacteria and the fungal class Dothideomycetes predominated the endophytic communities of K. schrenkianum. Aerial tissues of K. schrenkianum had higher fungal diversity, while roots had higher bacterial diversity. Radiation had no significant effect on the abundance of bacterial classes. Soil pH, total nitrogen, and organic matter showed significant effects on the diversity of root endophytes. Radiation affected bacterial and fungal community structure in roots but not in aerial tissues, and had a strong effect on fungal co-occurrence networks. Overall, the genetic diversity of both endophytic bacteria and fungi was higher in radioactive environments, however negative correlations were found between endophytic bacteria and fungi in the plant. The genetic diversity of both endophytic bacteria and fungi was higher in radioactive environments. Our findings suggest that radiation affects root endophytes, and that the endophytes associated with aerial tissues and roots of K. schrenkianum follow different mechanisms for community assembly and different paradigms in stress response.

Seasonal Dynamics and Persistency of Endophyte Communities in Kalidium schrenkianum Shifts Under Radiation Stress

“…The findings of this study agree with those reported in our previous study. Specifically, a higher diversity of bacterial communities in the roots than in aerial tissues and more radiation-sensitive fungal communities than bacterial communities were also observed in our previous study ( Zhu et al, 2021 ). In previous study, bacterial plant microbiome commonly showed similar patterns that higher diversity in roots than in aerial tissues, whereas the fungal diversity is no always higher in aerial tissues ( Su et al, 2010 ; Gdanetz and Trail, 2017 ).…”

“…The bacterial and fungal taxa were determined using the pipeline described by Zhu et al (2021) . The bacterial and fungal ASVs were first identified using Naïve Bayes approach with a minimum of 75 bootstrap calls following DADA2 workflow ( Callahan et al, 2016 ) against SILVA version 132 ( Quast et al, 2013 ) and UNITE general FASTA release for Fungi version 8.0 ( Nilsson et al, 2019 ).…”

“…Radiation has significant effects on microbial communities. For example, they regulate local soil microbial communities ( Zhdanova et al, 2005 ), gut microbiomes of mammals ( Lavrinienko et al, 2018 ), and endophyte communities of local plants ( Zhu et al, 2021 ). However, how environmental radiation affects the seasonal change of endophytic microbial communities in plants remains unknown.…”

“…Endophytes colonize host plants and jointly challenge harsh environmental conditions, including radiation stress ( Zhu et al, 2021 ). However, the annual shift in endophyte communities under radioactive environment is unknown.…”

Impact of Toxigenic Fungi: An Economic and Health Obstruction to Wellness in Mozambique

“…Although root endophytic microbiota is more determinant than soil microorganisms, the extent to which root fungi influence the microbial community assembly is not clear as such studies are quite challenging [132]. Therefore, it is still undetermined the real impact of the new biocontrol methods on the microbiota of soils and plant roots [133] and a consensus on best practices in microbiome research is still missing [134], [135].…”