CAPSULE © JORG GREUEL/GETTY IMAGES; BACTERIA © JEZPERKLAUZEN/ISTOCKPHOTO.COMLike humans, with their complement of microbes that aid in everything from immune responses to nutrition, plants rely on a vast array of bacteria and fungi for health and defense. Over the last decade, research has revealed many new functional aspects of the crosstalk between human-associated microbes and human cells, but plant biologists are only beginning to scratch the surface of the often surprising ways that soil microbiota impact plants, from underground fungus-wired alarm systems to soil bacteria that can trigger defensive plant behavior or even act as a sort of vaccine. But despite these benefits, microbes are still primarily thought of as harbingers of disease.
“Since the discovery of antibiotics, medical research has been dominated by a ‘bazooka mentality,’” and so has agricultural research, says Alexandre Jousset, a plant scientist at the Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany. “Traditionally, microbes have been viewed negatively, and focus has been placed on eradication.” Today, scientists and some medical doctors are becoming increasingly aware of their utility, and botanical researchers have also begun to debate whether the same may be true of plants.
While the Human Microbiome Project has discovered that some 10,000 species of microorganisms live in and on the human body, outnumbering our own cells by ten to one, plant scientists have found that any given soil sample contains more than 30,000 taxonomic varieties of microbes. Soil microflora not only provide nutrients ...
