Open AccessImpact of an 8-Year-Old Transgenic Poplar Plantation on the Ectomycorrhizal Fungal Community
Author(s) -
Franck Stefani,
JeanMarc Moncalvo,
Armand Séguin,
Jean A. Bérubé,
Richard Hamelin
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
applied and environmental microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.552
H-Index - 324
eISSN - 1070-6291
pISSN - 0099-2240
DOI - 10.1128/aem.01120-09
Subject(s) - biology , rhizosphere , botany , internal transcribed spacer , mycelium , soil microbiology , fungal diversity , gene , soil water , ecology , genetics , bacteria , ribosomal rna
The long-term impact of field-deployed genetically modified trees on soil mutualistic organisms is not well known. This study aimed at evaluating the impact of poplars transformed with a binary vector containing the selectablenptII marker and β-glucuronidase reporter genes on ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi 8 years after field deployment. We generated 2,229 fungal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) PCR products from 1,150 EM root tips and 1,079 fungal soil clones obtained from the organic and mineral soil horizons within the rhizosphere of three control and three transformed poplars. Fifty EM fungal operational taxonomic units were identified from the 1,706 EM fungal ITS amplicons retrieved. Rarefaction curves from both the root tips and soil clones were close to saturation, indicating that most of the EM species present were recovered. Based on qualitative and/or quantitative α- and β-diversity measurements, statistical analyses did not reveal significant differences between EM fungal communities associated with transformed poplars and the untransformed controls. However, EM communities recovered from the root tips and soil cloning analyses differed significantly from each other. We found no evidence of difference in the EM fungal community structure linked to the long-term presence of the transgenic poplars studied, and we showed that coupling root tip analysis with a soil DNA cloning strategy is a complementary approach to better document EM fungal diversity.