Title : Comparative metagenomic analysis of fungal diversity in Argemone mexicana from different regions of Northeast India
Abstract:
Argemone mexicana is considered as an essential plant in India with immense medicinal properties. The plant sap contains a lot of secondary metabolites, which is used exhaustively in traditional medicine. A. mexicana is known to harbour endophytes. Rhizospheric soil is the source of these endophytes.. Therefore, fungal communities in the rhizospheric soil, root and shoot of A. mexicana plant from two different ecological niches were studied.The site selection for sample collection was done based on our previous studies conducted on A. mexicana samples (Upadhaya D et al., 2020). The studies showed that Amlighat samples produce secondary metabolites having high acaricidal properties as compared to Dergaon samples of A. mexicana plant.
In this study, Illumina sequencing for the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) region of fungal community was used to analyze endophytic fungi diversity in rhizospheric soil samples and plant tissues (root and shoot) from two different locations (Dergaon and Amlighat) of Assam, India. The samples were coded, like Amlighat- root (ARS), Amlighat- shoot (ASS), Amlighat- rhizosphere soil (ARSS), Dergaon- root (DRS), Dergaon- shoot (DSS) and Dergaon- rhizosphere soil samples (DRSS) of A. mexicana plant. The OTU, Chao1, phylogenetic diversity and Shannon indexof fungal species were highest in number in Dergaon samplesin comparison toAmlighat samples. In addition Simpson index values indicated that fungal community diversity was greater in Amlighat samples (ASS and ARS) than in Dergaon samples (DSS, DRS) except DRSS samples which showed highest Simpson index.
High-throughput sequencing identified a total of 3 phyla, 6 classes, 15 orders, 66 families, 125 genera and 273 fungal species including unknown and unidentified taxa in the root, shoot and rhizosphere soil samples of A. mexicana. Based on Venn- graph, Krona plot, Heatmap, and cluster analysis, similarities in fungal communities was found at high level in all samples. The dominant fungal phyla were Ascomycota and Basidiomycota in the samples. It might be possible that these common fungal communities are responsible for the production of acaricidal compounds because these fungi are presented in plant samples at different relative abundance. NGS data were submitted in the BioProject database at NCBI as accession number PRJNA728854, PRJNA728856, PRJNA728860, PRJNA728865 and PRJNA728868.
Audience Take Away Notes:
- This is a research work. Metagenomics study is used to know total microbes present in the sample by Next Generation Sequencing (NGS).
- Earlier we were depended on plants for the drugs. Some researches proved that endophytes can also produce plant secondary metabolites.
- Argemone mexicana plant is well known medicinal plant. We want to know that whether its endophytes have ability to produce similar compounds or not.
- We isolated fungal endophytes from the root and shoot samples. We cultured only culturable fungal endophytes in our lab. That is why, we preferred NGS to know the non-culturable fungal endophytes.
- If the researcher wants to know the non-culturable microbes then he/she can use NGS.
