title: The Plant Microbiota: Systems-Level Insights and Perspectives.
abstract: Plants do not grow as axenic organisms in nature, but host a diverse community of microorganisms, termed the plant microbiota. There is an increasing awareness that the plant microbiota plays a role in plant growth and can provide protection from invading pathogens. Apart from intense research on crop plants, Arabidopsis is emerging as a valuable model system to investigate the drivers shaping stable bacterial communities on leaves and roots and as a tool to decipher the intricate relationship among the host and its colonizing microorganisms. Gnotobiotic experimental systems help establish causal relationships between plant and microbiota genotypes and phenotypes and test hypotheses on biotic and abiotic perturbations in a systematic way. We highlight major recent findings in plant microbiota research using comparative community profiling and omics analyses, and discuss these approaches in light of community establishment and beneficial traits like nutrient acquisition and plant health.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Microbiology, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland; email: jvorholt@ethz.ch.
authors.forename: Daniel B
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.affiliation: Institute of Microbiology, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland; email: jvorholt@ethz.ch.
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Vogel
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Microbe Interactions, Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, 50829 Cologne, Germany.|State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics, National Centre for Plant Gene Research, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Bai
authors.affiliation: Institute of Microbiology, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland; email: jvorholt@ethz.ch.
authors.forename: Julia A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Vorholt
mesh_terms: D000220:Adaptation, Biological; D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000382:microbiology; D017753:Ecosystem; D059013:Microbial Consortia; D064307:Microbiota; D010802:Phylogeny; D018517:Plant Roots / Q000382:microbiology; D010944:Plants / Q000382:microbiology*
keywords: Arabidopsis; bacterial community; commensal; gnotobiotic; microbiome; plant protection