Social behaviors shift properties that are beneficial to plants in
two-member consortia of Bacillus velezensis
- Jiahui Shao,
- Yan Liu,
- Hongyu Ding,
- Wenjuan Xu,
- Xinye Zhao,
- Jiyu Xie,
- Ben Fan,
- Ruifu Zhang,
- Zhihui Xu,
- Qirong Shen
Abstract
Bacillus spp. strains that are beneficial to plants are widely used in
commercial biofertilizers and biocontrol agents for sustainable
agriculture. Generally, functional Bacillus strains are applied as
single strain communities since the principles of synthetic microbial
consortia constructed with Bacillus strains remain largely unclear.
Here, we demonstrated that the kin discrimination system directly
affects the survival and function of two-member consortia composed of B.
velezensis SQR9 and FZB42 in the rhizosphere. A mutation in the global
regulator Spo0A of SQR9 markedly reduced the boundary phenotype with
wild-type FZB42, and the combined use of the spo0A mutant and FZB42
improved biofilm formation, root colonization and the production of
secondary metabolites that are beneficial to plants. We further
confirmed the correlation between the swarm discrimination phenotype
within community members and effects that are beneficial to plants in
greenhouse experiments. Our results provide evidence that social
interactions among bacteria could be an influencing factor in achieving
a desired community-level function.