Microbiota heritability in a clonal plant

Plants are colonized by a high diversity of symbiotic microorganisms forming a microbiota and providing additional functions to their host. The plant microbiota can be considered as a toolbox allowing plants tobuffer local environmental changes. It represents then a major compartment influencing the plant fitness.Under the frame of the plant holobiont and hologenome hypothesis, the transmission of symbiotic partners to progeny is investigated in our study. Most of the plants in nature are clonal. We thus tested under controlled conditions the hypothesis of an active transmission of the plant microbiota between ramets (i.e.from mother to clonal daughters) using Glechoma hederacea. For each plant individual, we analyzed microbial assemblages using high throughput sequencing of amplicons of Archaea, Bacteria and Fungi using DNA extracts from root samples of the mother and daughter ramets. We demonstrated the vertical transmission of a significant proportion of the mother Bacteria and Fungi assemblages to the daughters but not of Archaea. The work reveals the heritability of a specific core microbiota from mother plants to their descendants.