conservation and diversity of seed associated endophytes in zea across boundaries of evolution, ethnography and ecology保护和种子相关的内生菌的多样性玉蜀黍属跨边界的进化,人种学和生态学.pdfVIP

Conservation and Diversity of Seed Associated Endophytes in Zea across Boundaries of Evolution, Ethnography and Ecology David Johnston-Monje, Manish N. Raizada* Department of Plant Agriculture, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada Abstract Endophytes are non-pathogenic microbes living inside plants. We asked whether endophytic species were conserved in the agriculturally important plant genus Zea as it became domesticated from its wild ancestors (teosinte) to modern maize (corn) and moved from Mexico to Canada. Kernels from populations of four different teosintes and 10 different maize varieties were screened for endophytic bacteria by culturing, cloning and DNA fingerprinting using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (TRFLP) of 16S rDNA. Principle component analysis of TRFLP data showed that seed endophyte community composition varied in relation to plant host phylogeny. However, there was a core microbiota of endophytes that was conserved in Zea seeds across boundaries of evolution, ethnography and ecology. The majority of seed endophytes in the wild ancestor persist today in domesticated maize, though ancient selection against the hard fruitcase surrounding seeds may have altered the abundance of endophytes. Four TRFLP signals including two predicted to represent Clostridium and Paenibacillus species were conserved across all Zea genotypes, while culturing showed that Enterobacter, Methylobacteria, Pantoea and Pseudomonas species were widespread, with c-proteobacteria being the prevalent class. Twenty-six different genera were cultured, and these were evaluated for their ability to stimulate