AUTHOR=Tuo Yu , Dong Zhibao , Wang Xiping , Gao Beibei , Zhu Chunming , Tuo Fei 

TITLE=Metagenomics Reveal Correlations Between Microbial Organisms in Soils and the Health of Populus euphratica

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology

VOLUME=11

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.02095

DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2020.02095

ISSN=1664-302X

ABSTRACT=<p>Biological diversity plays an important role in the stability of ecosystems. The Mu Us Desert (MUD), located in Northern China, is an aeolian desert. Although it has been governed by a series of ecological restoration programs, the MUD still has limited biological diversity. <italic>Populus euphratica</italic> (<italic>P. euphratica</italic>), a xerophytic plant, has great potential to improve the biological diversity of the MUD. However, the survival rate of <italic>P. euphratica</italic> in the MUD has been very low. The current study tried to explore the mechanism of the high death rate of <italic>P. euphratica</italic> in the microbiome perspective. The correlation study between soil community composition and soil properties showed that water-filled pore space (WFPS), pH, EC, AP, NO<sub>3</sub><sup>–</sup>, and NH<sub>4</sub><sup>+</sup> possess higher potential to change the bacterial community (18%) than the fungal community (9%). Principal coordinate analysis indicated that the composition of both bacteria (<italic>Proteobacteria</italic> and <italic>Bacteroidetes</italic>) and fungi (<italic>Ascomycota</italic>) in the root soil can be increased by <italic>P. euphratica</italic>. By systematically comparing between the fungal diversity in the root soil around <italic>P. euphratica</italic> and the pathogenic fungus extract from the pathogenic site of <italic>P. euphratica</italic>, we found that the high death rate of <italic>P. euphratica</italic> was associated with specific pathogenic fungus <italic>Alternaria alternate</italic> and <italic>Didymella glomerata</italic>. In addition, the microbiome composition analysis indicated that <italic>P. euphratica</italic> planting could also influence the portions of bacteria community, which also has great potential to lead to future infection. However, as the extraction and separation of bacteria from plants is challenging, the correlation between pathogenic bacteria and the high death rate of <italic>P. euphratica</italic> was not studied here and could be explored in future work.</p>