The model plant Arabidopsis thaliana is inhabited by unicellular eukaryotes

What is it about?

It is known that bacteria are important residents on the surface of plants but also inside plant tissue. So far unicellular eukaryotes like flagellates have also been shown to live with their plant hosts, but studies have focussed largely on parasites. We show that a diverse community of unicellular eukaryotes lives inside plant tissue and that the composition depends on the plant organ studied. We used modern metabarcoding methodology to profile the communities.

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Why is it important?

Despite their importance as parasites unicellular eukaryotes have been largely understudied in plant microbiome research. To distinguish the field from the much better developed study of bacteria and fungi associated with plants we coined the term protistbiome. Its description is of fundamental importance and contributes to questions in soil protist research and the rhizosphere microbial loop.

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