The symbiotic agriculture of fungus-farming termites can collapse if they fail to prevent invading weeds. Previous studies suggest a role for symbiotic fungistatic microbes in bringing about weed cont...

Plant roots are colonized by diverse microbial communities. These communities are shaped by root exudates, including plant-specialized metabolites. Benzoxazinoids are such secreted compounds of maize. Individual microbes differ in their ability to tolerate and metabolize antimicrobial benzoxazinoids. To investigate how these traits combine in a community, we designed two synthetic communities of maize root bacteria that share six common strains and differ in their ability to metabolize benzoxazinoids based on the seventh strain. We exposed both communities to the benzoxazinoid MBOA (6-methoxybenzoxazolin-2(3H)-one) in vitro and found that the metabolizing community did not degrade MBOA to its aminophenoxazinone, as observed for individual strains, but, as a community, they formed the corresponding acetamide. MBOA shaped the differential compositions of both communities and increased the fraction of MBOA-tolerant strains. The benzoxazinoid-metabolizing community showed a higher tolerance to MBOA and was able to utilize MBOA as their sole carbon source for growth. Hence, bacterial interaction results in alternative benzoxazinoid metabolization and increases community performance in the presence of these antimicrobial compounds. Future work is needed to uncover the genetics of this metabolic interaction and ecological consequences for the bacterial community and the host plant.

Soil models include a key parameter known as carbon use efficiency, which impacts estimates of global carbon storage by determining the flow of carbon into soil pools versus the atmosphere. Microbial-...

Large pulses of disturbance have been observed globally in response to climate change. Using Taylor’s Law, the authors show that those pulses were not unpredictable but expected given a strong scaling...

Fungal diversity is critical for ecosystem functioning, yet its role in mediating the relationship between plant diversity and ecosystem multifunctionality remains unclear. This study finds that funga...

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Zia Mehrabi from the University of Colorado Boulder, National Champion for the USA, presents groundbreaking research from a global collaboration showing how increasing on-farm diversity improves both ...

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a potent greenhouse gas and the main stratospheric ozone-depleting agent, yet its sources are not well resolved. In this work, we experimentally show a N2O production pathway no...

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