Individual leaf microbiota tunes a genetic regulatory network to promote leaf growth

To demonstrate that the unexpected leaf growth promotion observed in plants grown in a natural poor soil might be determined by the population of microbes inhabiting the leaves, we inoculated bacterial community in pots containing pre-germinated B73 seeds sown in the sterile sand clay system supplemented with two concentrations of Hoagland medium, low and full Hoagland. As a control we also grown B73 seeds under axenic conditions in both nutrient concentrations. Then, we profiled bacterial communities established in plant roots, leaves and pot soils using DNA amplicon sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene.