Effects of antimicrobial peptide expression on the root microbiota of field-grown Nicotiana attenuata plants

We constitutively expressed the antimicrobial peptide (Mc-AMP1) from the common ice plant (Mesembryanthemum crystallinum) in the wild tobacco (Nicotiana attenuata) to examine the ecological consequences of antimicrobial peptide expression in nature. Transformants were planted with isogenic empty-vector controls into the plant’s natural habitat and the native root-associated bacterial community analyzed by high-throughput 16S rDNA sequencing.