ArticleScientific reports2021
Transmitting silks of maize have a complex and dynamic microbiome.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Revisiting the role of pollen-microbiome interactions: new insights into the "One Health-One Biosecurity" concept in changing agroecosystems.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- The Microbiome of Fertilization-Stage Maize Silks (Style) Encodes Genes and Expresses Traits That Potentially Promote Survival in Pollen/Style Niches and Host Reproduction.Microorganisms · 2024Article
- The Cultured Microbiome of Pollinated Maize Silks Shifts after Infection withPathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Maize seed endophytes.Molecular plant pathology · 2023Review
- Maize pollen carry bacteria that suppress a fungal pathogen that enters through the male gamete fertilization route.Frontiers in plant science · 2023Article
- Bacteria existing in pre-pollinated styles (silks) can defend the exposed male gamete fertilization channel of maize against an environmentalFrontiers in plant science · 2023Article
- Conservation and diversity of the pollen microbiome of Pan-American maize using PacBio and MiSeq.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Patterns of Microbiome Composition Vary Across Spatial Scales in a Specialist Insect.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In corn/maize, silks emerging from cobs capture pollen, and transmit resident sperm nuclei to eggs. There are > 20 million silks per U.S. maize acre. Fungal pathogens invade developing grain using silk channels, including Fusarium graminearum (Fg, temperate environments) and devastating carcinogen-producers (Africa/tropics). Fg contaminates cereal grains with mycotoxins, in particular Deoxynivalenol (DON), known for adverse health effects on humans and livestock. Fitness selection should promote defensive/healthy silks. Here, we report that maize silks, known as styles in other plants, possess complex and dynamic microbiomes at the critical pollen-fungal transmission interval (henceforth: transmitting style microbiome, TSM). Diverse maize genotypes were field-grown in two trial years. MiSeq 16S rRNA gene sequencing of 328 open-pollinated silk samples (healthy/Fg-infected) revealed that the TSM contains > 5000 taxa spanning the prokaryotic tree of life (47 phyla/1300 genera), including nitrogen-fixers. The TSM of silk tip tissue displayed seasonal responsiveness, but possessed a reproducible core of 7-11 MiSeq-amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) dominated by a single Pantoea MiSeq-taxon (15-26% of sequence-counts). Fg-infection collapsed TSM diversity and disturbed predicted metabolic functionality, but doubled overall microbiome size/counts, primarily by elevating 7-25 MiSeq-ASVs, suggestive of a selective microbiome response against infection. This study establishes the maize silk as a model for fundamental/applied research of plant reproductive microbiomes.
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