Infection of Plasmodiophora brassicae changes the fungal endophyte community of tumourous stem mustard roots as revealed by high-throughput sequencing and culture-dependent methods

PLoS One. 2019 Jun 12;14(6):e0214975. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0214975. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Diverse fungal endophytes live in plants and are shaped by some abiotic and biotic stresses. Plant disease as particular biotic stress possibly gives an impact on the communities of fungal endophytes. In this study, clubroot disease caused by an obligate biotroph protist, Plasmodiophora brassicae, was considered to analyze its influence on the fungal endophyte community using an internal transcribed spacer (ITS) through high-throughput sequencing and culture-dependent methods. The results showed that the diversity of the endophyte community in the healthy roots was much higher than the clubroots. Ascomycota was the dominant group of endophytes (Phoma, Mortierella, Penicillium, etc.) in the healthy roots while P. brassicae was the dominant taxon in the clubroots. Hierarchical clustering, principal component analysis (PCA), principal coordinates analysis (PCoA) and analysis of similarities (ANOSIM) indicated significant differences between the endophyte communities in the healthy roots and clubroots. Linear discriminant analysis effect size (LefSe) analysis showed that the dominant genera could be regarded as potential biomarkers. The endophyte community in the healthy roots had a more complex network compared with the clubroots. Also, many plant pathogenic Fusarium were isolated from the clubroots by the culture-dependent method. The outcome of this study illustrates that P. brassicae infection may change the fungal endophyte community associated with the roots of tumourous stem mustard and facilitates the entry of soil pathogen into the roots.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Culture Techniques
  • Endophytes*
  • Fusarium / cytology
  • Fusarium / isolation & purification
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing
  • Mustard Plant / microbiology
  • Mustard Plant / parasitology
  • Mycobiome*
  • Plant Diseases / microbiology
  • Plant Diseases / parasitology
  • Plant Roots / microbiology
  • Plant Roots / parasitology
  • Plasmodiophorida / pathogenicity*
  • Protozoan Infections*

Grants and funding

This study was supported by a grant from the Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 31570495 to LP and no. 31770407 to DW). The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.