Community structure and diversity of endophytic bacteria in different
niches of camellia oleifera
Abstract
Endophytic bacteria are important for plant growth, stress tolerance and
metabolite synthesis. Camellia oleifera is a unique woody oil crop in
China, and the bacterial communities at different niches have not been
fully reported. To investigate the structural characteristics and
diversity of bacterial communities in different niches of C. oleifera,
we applied high-throughput sequencing technology on the Illumina MiSeq
platform to explore the diversity of bacteria species in roots, stems,
leaves, inter-rhizosphere soils and non-rhizosphere soils of C.
oleifera. We obtained 3,127 OTUs (operational taxonomic units) from five
samples, belonging to 16 phyla, 58 orders, 91 families, 162 families and
249 genera; the abundance and diversity of bacterial communities in
different niches of C. oleifera decreased from bottom to top; the
absolute dominant species in different tissues of C. oleifera were the
same at different levels except for soil, and there were specific
bacterial communities in roots and stems of C. oleifera. The KEGG
functional predictions revealed that endophytic bacteria were involved
in a variety of metabolic pathways, including functional information
related to human diseases. The structure and diversity of endophytic
bacterial communities in different niches of C. oleifera showed a
bottom-up filtering selection mechanism, and the bacterial communities
in different niches differed significantly in structure and functional
information, providing favourable information for the functional use of
endophytic bacteria and the exploitation of new beneficial microbial
resources, which is worth further research and exploitation.