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Deciphering the rhizobacterial assemblages under the influence of genetically engineered maize carrying mcry genes

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Abstract

Genetically engineered (GE) maize has been thoroughly studied regarding its agro-environmental impact; however, its concerns for the soil environment remain. This work was aimed to decode rhizosphere microbe interactions and potential ecological hazards associated with GE maize. Rhizobacterial communities of field grown transgenic insect-resistant 2A5 maize carrying mcry1Ab and mcry2Ab genes were compared with control Z58 using PacBio sequencing platform. Also full-length 16S rDNA gene sequencing was used to verify the partial (V3–V4) sequencing results obtained in 2017. Measures of α-diversity displayed transgenic 2A5 to be significantly lower in species richness at the flowering stage; however, diversity remained undisturbed. β-diversity was least affected by genetic modifications where similar community profiles were shared by transgenic 2A5 and control Z58. In addition, root exudation patterns were found to drive variations in bacterial assemblages based on developmental stages. For example, genus Massilia successfully colonized the rhizosphere at jointing stage, while Mucilaginobacter showed higher relative abundance in flowering stages of both 2A5 and Z58. These members are known to possess attributes related to plant growth. The impact of dual-transgene insertion on nifH gene abundance was also analyzed where no apparent significant difference in nifH gene copy number was observed. Our results confirmed that full-length 16S rDNA sequencing was sufficient to provide higher taxonomic resolution. Also, results of our 2-year field trials confirmed that there is no significant impact of mcry gene integration on belowground biomasses. Therefore, GE insect-resistant 2A5 maize carrying mcry1Ab and mcry2Ab genes can continue to benefit human populations by increasing crop productivity. In future, further research needs to be catalyzed to analyze the impact of Bt-insertion on microbial community structure across the years for ecosystem sustainability.

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Data availability

Raw sequence data file is available in FASTQ format in NCBI Sequence Read Archive with SRA Bio Project ID: PRJNA686837.

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Acknowledgment

We are grateful to Prof. Xuehui Dong of College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, China Agriculture University, for providing maize seeds of transgenic insect-resistant maize 2A5 and its control variety Z58.

Funding

This work was supported by the grants from National Important Science & Technology Specific Project (2016ZX08011-003), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31870495), and the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University from the Ministry of Education of China (IRT_14R27).

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Author notes

  1. Aliya Fazal, Zhongling Wen and Minkai Yang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Plant Molecular Biology, State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Aliya Fazal, Zhongling Wen, Minkai Yang, Yonghui Liao, Jiangyan Fu, Cong He, Xuan Wang, Wencai Jie, Farman Ali, Dongqing Hu, Zhi Hong, Guihua Lu, Jinliang Qi & Yonghua Yang

  2. Co-Innovation Center for Sustainable Forestry in Southern China, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, 210037, China

    Tongming Yin, Jinliang Qi & Yonghua Yang

  3. School of Life Sciences, Huaiyin Normal University, Huaian, 223300, China

    Guihua Lu

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  1. Aliya Fazal
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  2. Zhongling Wen
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Contributions

YHY, GHL, and JLQ conceived and designed the experiments; AF, ZLW, MKY, and YHL performed experiments and analyzed data; JYF, CH, XW, WCJ, FA, DQH, TMY, and ZH contributed to the resources; AF wrote the manuscript; YHY and GHL contributed to reviewing and editing the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Guihua Lu, Jinliang Qi or Yonghua Yang.

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Ethics statement

The Ministry of Agriculture of the People’s Republic of China issued permission for the location. The field studies did not involve endangered species. The experimental field was not protected or privately owned in any way.

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All authors participated and approved the final manuscript to be published.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Fazal, A., Wen, Z., Yang, M. et al. Deciphering the rhizobacterial assemblages under the influence of genetically engineered maize carrying mcry genes. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 60154–60166 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14901-7

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