The research group of Hirokazu Toju, Associate Professor of Ecological Research Center, Kyoto University, Hiroko Kurokawa, Senior Researcher of Forestry Research Institute, and Kenta Tanaka, Associate Professor of Mountain Science Center, Tsukuba University, has enormously applied leaves and roots of plants in the grassland ecosystem. We found that various kinds of bacteria and fungi coexist.
Grassland ecosystems are a treasure trove of biodiversity.Many plant species, various insects that visit the plants, and birds and mammals that prey on insects and small mammals make up the grassland ecosystem.Currently, grasslands are rapidly being lost in various parts of Japan, but the current situation is that there is a lack of data to objectively judge what human beings will lose when the grassland ecosystem is lost. rice field.
Therefore, in order to comprehensively analyze the collection of microorganisms that coexist in the leaves and roots of plants, the research group conducted a field survey in Sugadairakogen, Nagano Prefecture, where the species diversity of plants is extremely high. Plants were collected as samples.Bacteria and fungi (mushrooms, molds, yeasts) that coexist with plants were analyzed by "DNA metabar coding", and as many as 33 strains of bacteria and archaea and as many as 137 strains of fungi were detected.This contained a large number of microorganisms capable of promoting plant growth and producing raw materials for pharmaceutical products.In addition, there were some bacteria that were rarely reported in Japan.
This result suggests that many useful resources are sleeping in the grassland ecosystem.By accumulating this microbial data, it is expected that highly functional resources can be effectively used.
Paper information:[Frontiers in Microbiology] Factors Influencing Leaf- and Root-Associated Communities of Bacteria and Fungi Across 33 Plant Orders in a Grassland
