ArticlePLoS biology2018
Design of synthetic bacterial communities for predictable plant phenotypes.
Article in PLoS biology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 104 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
104 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- From Microbial Dynamics to Functionality in the Rhizosphere: A Systematic Review of the Opportunities With Synthetic Microbial Communities.Frontiers in plant science · 2021Pooled it
- Sucrose and pipecolic acid-mediated enrichment of rhizosphere Rhizobiale-Burkholderiale bacteria improves soybean growth under low-light conditions.Plant communications · 2026Article
- It takes a village: how plant-associated bacterial communities socialise to shape plant growth and health.Essays in biochemistry · 2026Review
- Article
- Pairwise inoculation of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria unveils predominant strain-specific effects in root growth and hormone-responsive promoter activity in Arabidopsis thaliana.Archives of microbiology · 2026Article
- Machine learning reveals biocontrol agents shaping disease outcome in natural Arabidopsis populations.Nature communications · 2026Article
- MAX3 deficiency recruits protective Pseudomonas via modulating the SL-ABA-flavonoid axis to suppress soil-borne pathogen infection.Nature communications · 2026Article
- What do we know about the seed microbiome?Microbiome · 2026Review
- Microbial biotechnology meets ecological theory: a unified framework to design industrial microbial consortia.International microbiology : the official journal of the Spanish Society for Microbiology · 2026Review
- Review
- Synthetic Biology of Plants and Microbes for Agriculture, Environment, and Future Applications.Chemical reviews · 2026Review
- Deterministic recruitment limitation during soybean pod development shapes seed-transmitted microbiota assembly.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Ecological drift simulations reveal key factors influencing minimal microbiome engineering and community assembly.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Refining the root-associated microbial consortia for enhanced biocontrol of the root-rot pathogen of corn.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Synthetic microbiomes in bioengineered rhizospheres: new frontiers for climate-resilient agriculture.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Review
- Engineering synthetic microbial communities for soil restoration: from rational design to multi-scale biogeochemical applications.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Review
- Cross-kingdom synthetic microbial communities outperform single-kingdom consortia in promoting potato growth under continuous cropping.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Drought-tolerant rhizobacterial consortia enhance grapevine growth and tolerance to water deficit.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Article
- Community Dynamics Drive Calcium Carbonate Production in an Enriched Consortium of Soil Microbes.Microbial ecology · 2025Article
- Metabolome-driven microbiome assembly in ginger (Zingiber officinale) enhances nutrient cycling and crop yield through keystone taxa.Communications biology · 2025Article
44 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Specific members of complex microbiota can influence host phenotypes, depending on both the abiotic environment and the presence of other microorganisms. Therefore, it is challenging to define bacterial combinations that have predictable host phenotypic outputs. We demonstrate that plant-bacterium binary-association assays inform the design of small synthetic communities with predictable phenotypes in the host. Specifically, we constructed synthetic communities that modified phosphate accumulation in the shoot and induced phosphate starvation-responsive genes in a predictable fashion. We found that bacterial colonization of the plant is not a predictor of the plant phenotypes we analyzed. Finally, we demonstrated that characterizing a subset of all possible bacterial synthetic communities is sufficient to predict the outcome of untested bacterial consortia. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to infer causal relationships between microbiota membership and host phenotypes and to use these inferences to rationally design novel communities.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.