Microbial and metabolomic rhizosphere effect of B. stricta genotypes are often suppressed when in local soil environment

Raw data (OUT_Tax_16S.sintax and metafinal.csv) used to generate phyloseq object (genoXsoil_phyloseq.rds) used for paper analysis of 16S rRNA DNA gene bacterial data. Two xls files of chemical data sampled from bulk and rhizosphere soils where bacteria were sampled, generated using MetaboAnalyst.

The abstract for the paper generated using this data is as follows:

The rhizosphere microbial and chemical environments vary depending on the species and genotype of the plant host. In addition to the variation of plasticity inherent between genotypes, allelic changes at even a few plant genes can have far-reaching consequences on genotype by environment interactions, and little is known about genotypic sensitivity of the rhizosphere microbial and chemical environments to local vs. foreign soil environments. Our study investigated the rhizosphere microbiome and metabolome of three distinct B. stricta clonal lines in and out of their local soil microbial environment. We found that while soil matrix was the greatest predictor of plant health and rhizosphere microbial and chemical composition, plant genotype was a significant, though not consistent, predictor of those biotic and abiotic factors as well. While some differences could be explained by genotype-specific life histories, others were driven by genotype by environment interactions of plants with their local soil-microbiome environment. Plants in their local soils by and large showed decreased differentiation of the rhizosphere from the bulk soil environment both via differential abundance of bacteria and total number of significantly different chemical features, which could indicate a tradeoff in carbon allocation to convey a fitness advantage to the plant. Further research into the magnitude of host genotypes’ effects on the rhizosphere and into disentangling biotic origins of chemical features will further our understanding of the complicated top-down feedback in the plant-microbial-soil microenvironment of the rhizosphere.