Researchers cultivate the majority of bacteria in the laboratory that colonize Arabidopsis plants in nature
No organism is an island - a fact that also applies to plants. Healthy plants host complex microbial communities comprising over 100 bacterial species which presumably play important roles in plant growth and health. Plants allow access only to a select community of bacteria, designated the plant microbiota, that originate mainly from a vast diversity of microorganisms present in natural soil. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne together with scientists in Switzerland cultivated over half of the bacteria found on and in the leaves and roots of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress). Using this representative collection of over 400 bacterial strains in pure culture, the researchers can now reconstitute any microbial community in the leaves and roots of Arabidopsis under laboratory settings. This development marks the beginning of a new era in plant-microbe ecology using defined microbiota.