A group from State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China, etc. has reported about comparative functional genome analysis of plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) in NCBI Databases.
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/spectrum.05007-22?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubmed
PGPB are a group of beneficial microorganisms that include 60 bacterial genera, such as Bacillus, Pseudomonas, and Burkholderia, which widely colonize plant leaves and soil, promote plant growth, and/or inhibit pathogen infection. PGPB colonize either leaves (leaf associated [LA]; 195 strains) or rhizospheric soil (soil associated [SA]; 283 strains).
The results of this study demonstrate that PGPB generally contain a large quantity of carbohydrate enzymes (CAZymes), which enhance their ability to colonize plants. Among the LA PGPB strains, Pseudomonas strains exhibited a higher abundance of CAZymes than other strains, indicating that this genus could be developed into an ideal interfoliar biocontrol agent. The CAZymes can break down the cell walls of plant pathogens, leading to pathogen death. Conversely, among the SA PGPB strains, Burkholderia strains possessed a higher concentration of genes encoding carbohydrate metabolism enzymes, suggesting that they have diverse mechanisms for carbohydrate utilization. The genera Bacillus and Paenibacillus, found in the LA and SA habitats, produced a higher number of secondary metabolite clusters, making them suitable for both leaf and soil environment. The greater the number of secondary metabolic gene clusters in bacteria, the stronger their ability to perform biological defense. The majority of Bacillus strains of PGPB possess more abundant secondary metabolic clusters than other taxonomic groups in the LA and SA habitats. Actually, Bacillus strains are dominant biocontrol agents in the market.
