Genome sequencing of phyllosphere bacteria isolated from natural tomato plants

A major challenge in harnessing microbiome function is understanding the factors that drive community assembly and composition. Microbiome community assembly dynamics and the interspecific microbial interactions all occurring within have impacts on the resulting function of the community. Bacteria are major inhabitants of the phyllosphere microbiome and are known to influence their host plant through a variety of mechanisms. Here, we investigated the direct and indirect interaction effects within a synthetic community of tomato-derived bacteria strains using experimental and high-throughput sequencing methods.