Amino Acid Availability Determines Plant Immune Homeostasis in the Rhizosphere Microbiome

Abstract

Understanding how microbiota evade and suppress host immunity is critical to our knowledge of how beneficial microbes persist in association with a host. Prior work has shown that secretion of organic acids by beneficial microbes is sufficient to suppress plant immunity. This work shows that microbial amino acid metabolism is not only critical for growth in the plant rhizosphere microbiome, but also for regulation of plant rhizosphere pH, and, consequentially, regulation of plant immunity. We found that, in the absence of microbial glutamate and arginine metabolism, rhizosphere alkalization and microbial overgrowth occurs. Collectively, our findings suggest that, by regulating nutrient availability, plants have the potential to regulate their immune homeostasis in the rhizosphere microbiome.