Original title: Microbial interactions within the plant holobiont
A plant and its associated microbes form a community called a holobiontA plant together with the microbes associated with it.. Microbes do not only affect the plant; they also compete and cooperate with one another. These interactions can shape which microbes live on leaves, near roots, or inside plant tissues, and may influence plant health. The paper reviews examples and offers a framework for how these interactions help keep the plant and its microbes in balance.
Imagine a group of people sharing a busy kitchen. When supplies are limited, they may compete for ingredients, while at other times they help one another prepare a meal. In this paper, the kitchen is the plant, and the people are the microbes living on or inside it; their relationships help shape the group and may affect the plant’s health.
Plants host dense communities of microbes on their leaves, around their roots, and inside their tissues. Understanding how those microbes compete and cooperate could help explain which communities support plant health, though the abstract says we still know little about their effects in natural settings.
The review says that we still have limited understanding of how microbial interactions shape complex plant-associated communities and how those interactions affect plant health in natural settings. It presents a conceptual framework and examples, not a settled account of these effects.
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Microbial interactions within the plant holobiont — M. Amine Hassani, Paloma Durán, Stéphane Hacquard — Microbiome — doi:10.1186/s40168-018-0445-0
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.