A synthetic community of siderophore-producing bacteria increases soil selenium bioavailability and plant uptake through regulation of the soil microbiome

Selenium dynamics in plants: Uptake, transport, toxicity, and sustainable management strategies

Selenium (Se) plays crucial roles in human, animal, and plant physiology, but its varied plant functions remain complex and not fully understood. While Se deficiency affects over a billion people worldwide, excessive Se levels can be toxic, presenting substantial risks to ecosystem health and public safety. The delicate balance between Se's beneficial and harmful effects necessitates a deeper understanding of its speciation dynamics and how different organisms within ecosystems respond to Se. Since humans primarily consume Se through Se-rich foods, exploring Se's behavior, uptake, and transport within agroecosystems is critical to creating effective management strategies. Traditional physicochemical methods for Se remediation are often expensive and potentially harmful to the environment, pushing the need for more sustainable solutions. In recent years, phytotechnologies have gained traction as a promising approach to Se management by harnessing plants' natural abilities to absorb, accumulate, metabolize, and volatilize Se. These strategies range from boosting Se uptake and tolerance in plants to releasing Se as less toxic volatile compounds or utilizing it as a biofortified supplement, opening up diverse possibilities for managing Se, offering sustainable pathways to improve crop nutritional quality, and protecting human health in different environmental contexts. However, closing the gaps in our understanding of Se dynamics within agricultural systems calls for a united front of interdisciplinary collaboration from biology to environmental science, agriculture, and public health, which has a crucial role to play. Phytotechnologies offer a sustainable bridge between Se deficiency and toxicity, but further research is needed to optimize these methods and explore their potential in various agricultural and environmental settings. By shedding light on Se's multifaceted roles and refining management strategies, this review contributes to developing cost-effective and eco-friendly approaches for Se management in agroecosystems. It aims to lead the way toward a healthier and more sustainable future by balancing the need to address Se deficiency and mitigate the risks of Se toxicity.

Embracing complexity in plant-microbiome systems

Despite recent advances in understanding the role of microorganisms in plant holobiont metabolism, physiology, and fitness, several relevant questions are yet to be answered, with implications for ecology, evolution, and sustainable agriculture. This article explores some of these questions and discusses emerging research areas in plant microbiomes. Firstly, it emphasizes the need to move beyond taxonomic characterization towards understanding microbial functions within plant ecosystems. Secondly, controlling methodological biases and enhancing OMICS technologies' standardization is imperative for a deeper comprehension of plant-microbiota interactions. Furthermore, while plant microbiota research has primarily centred on bacteria and fungi, other microbial players such as archaea, viruses, and microeukaryotes have been largely overlooked. Emerging evidence highlights their presence and potential roles, underscoring the need for thorough assessments. Future research should aim to elucidate the ecological microbial interactions, their impact on plant performance, and how the plant context shapes microbial community dynamics. Finally, a discussion is provided on how the multiple layers of abiotic and biotic factors influencing the spatiotemporal dynamics of plant-microbiome systems require in-depth attention. Examples illustrate how synthetic communities and computational methods such as machine learning and artificial intelligence provide alternatives to tackle these challenges and analyse the plant holobiont as a complex system.

Contributions of selenium-oxidizing bacteria to selenium biofortification and cadmium bioremediation in a native seleniferous Cd-polluted sandy loam soil

Selenium (Se) is a trace element that is essential for human health. Daily dietary Se intake is governed by the food chain through soil-plant systems. However, the cadmium (Cd) content tends to be excessive in seleniferous soil, in which Se and Cd have complex interactions. Therefore, it is a great challenge to grow crops containing appreciable amounts of Se but low amounts of Cd. We compared the effects of five Se-transforming bacteria on Se and Cd uptake by Brassica rapa L. in a native seleniferous Cd-polluted soil. The results showed that three Se-oxidizing bacteria (LX-1, LX-100, and T3F4) increased the Se content of the aboveground part of the plant by 330.8%, 309.5%, and 724.3%, respectively, compared to the control (p < 0.05). The three bacteria also reduced the aboveground Cd content by 15.1%, 40.4%, and 16.4%, respectively (p < 0.05). In contrast, the Se(IV)-reducing bacterium ES2-45 and weakly Se-transforming bacterium LX-4 had no effect on plant Se uptake, although they did decrease the aboveground Cd content. In addition, the three Se-oxidizing bacteria increased the Se available in the soil by 38.4%, 20.4%, and 24.0%, respectively, compared to the control (p < 0.05). The study results confirm the feasibility of using Se-oxidizing bacteria to simultaneously enhance plant Se content and reduce plant Cd content in seleniferous Cd-polluted soil.

Strategies for tailoring functional microbial synthetic communities

Natural ecosystems harbor a huge reservoir of taxonomically diverse microbes that are important for plant growth and health. The vast diversity of soil microorganisms and their complex interactions make it challenging to pinpoint the main players important for the life support functions microbes can provide to plants, including enhanced tolerance to (a)biotic stress factors. Designing simplified microbial synthetic communities (SynComs) helps reduce this complexity to unravel the molecular and chemical basis and interplay of specific microbiome functions. While SynComs have been successfully employed to dissect microbial interactions or reproduce microbiome-associated phenotypes, the assembly and reconstitution of these communities have often been based on generic abundance patterns or taxonomic identities and co-occurrences but have only rarely been informed by functional traits. Here, we review recent studies on designing functional SynComs to reveal common principles and discuss multidimensional approaches for community design. We propose a strategy for tailoring the design of functional SynComs based on integration of high-throughput experimental assays with microbial strains and computational genomic analyses of their functional capabilities.

Agronomic and Genetic Strategies to Enhance Selenium Accumulation in Crops and Their Influence on Quality

Selenium (Se) is an essential trace element that plays a crucial role in maintaining the health of humans, animals, and certain plants. It is extensively present throughout the Earth's crust and is absorbed by crops in the form of selenates and selenite, eventually entering the food chain. Se biofortification is an agricultural process that employs agronomic and genetic strategies. Its goal is to enhance the mechanisms of crop uptake and the accumulation of exogenous Se, resulting in the production of crops enriched with Se. This process ultimately contributes to promoting human health. Agronomic strategies in Se biofortification aim to enhance the availability of exogenous Se in crops. Concurrently, genetic strategies focus on improving a crop's capacity to uptake, transport, and accumulate Se. Early research primarily concentrated on optimizing Se biofortification methods, improving Se fertilizer efficiency, and enhancing Se content in crops. In recent years, there has been a growing realization that Se can effectively enhance crop growth and increase crop yield, thereby contributing to alleviating food shortages. Additionally, Se has been found to promote the accumulation of macro-nutrients, antioxidants, and beneficial mineral elements in crops. The supplementation of Se biofortified foods is gradually emerging as an effective approach for promoting human dietary health and alleviating hidden hunger. Therefore, in this paper, we provide a comprehensive summary of the Se biofortification conducted over the past decade, mainly focusing on Se accumulation in crops and its impact on crop quality. We discuss various Se biofortification strategies, with an emphasis on the impact of Se fertilizer strategies on crop Se accumulation and their underlying mechanisms. Furthermore, we highlight Se's role in enhancing crop quality and offer perspective on Se biofortification in crop improvement, guiding future mechanistic explorations and applications of Se biofortification.

Phenylalanine-mediated changes in the soil bacterial community promote nitrogen cycling and plant growth

Soil amino acids (AAs) are the most active components of soil N, which can be mineralized or absorbed by bacteria as N and C sources. We hypothesized that exogenous AAs could regulate the bacterial community and affect soil N cycling, and the effect sizes could vary depending on individual AAs. Here, we applied feather (keratin)-based compost rich in AAs to Poncirus trifoliata (L.) to evaluate the regulation of bacterial community by AAs; furthermore, we applied six individual AAs to test their effects. The compost significantly increased soil hydrolysable AA content, ammonia monooxygenase gene abundance, and plant growth and changed bacterial community structure. Redundancy analysis revealed that the effects of AAs on the bacterial community composition were greater than those of soil chemical properties, and phenylalanine (Phe) was the most effective among thirteen individual AAs. When applied individually, Phe caused the greatest increase in N cycling-related enzyme activity and plant growth and most significantly altered the bacterial community structure among the six exogenous AAs. Notably, Phe significantly increased the relative abundances of Burkholderia-Caballeronia-Paraburkholderia, Azospirillum, Cupriavidus, and Achromobacter, whose abundances were significantly positively correlated with plant biomass, and significantly reduced the relative abundances of Arachidicoccus, Pseudopedobacter, Sphingobacterium, and Paenibacillus, whose abundances were significantly negatively correlated with plant biomass. We demonstrate that soil AAs strongly shape the bacterial community. Particularly, Phe enhances N cycling and plant growth by increasing the potentially beneficial bacterial taxa and inhibiting the potentially harmful bacterial taxa, which needs further validation.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi improve selenium uptake by modulating root transcriptome of rice (Oryza sativa L.)

Although selenium (Se) is an essential trace element in humans, the intake of Se from food is still generally inadequate throughout the world. Inoculation with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) improves the uptake of Se in rice (Oryza sativa L.). However, the mechanism by which AMF improves the uptake of Se in rice at the transcriptome level is unknown. Only a few studies have evaluated the effects of uptake of other elements in rice under the combined effects of Se and AMF. In this study, Se combined with the AMF Funneliformis mosseae (Fm) increased the biomass and Se concentration of rice plants, altered the pattern of ionomics of the rice roots and shoots, and reduced the antagonistic uptake of Se with nickel, molybdenum, phosphorus, and copper compared with the treatment of Se alone, indicating that Fm can enhance the effect of fertilizers rich in Se. Furthermore, a weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) showed that the hub genes in modules significantly associated with the genes that contained Se and were related to protein phosphorylation, protein serine/threonine kinase activity, membrane translocation, and metal ion binding, suggesting that the uptake of Se by the rice roots may be associated with these genes when Fm and Se act in concert. This study provides a reference for the further exploration of genes related to Se uptake in rice under Fm treatment.