Metagenomic monitoring of bacterial communities and functional genes in bulk soil surrounding a rare, endangered and protected tree: Acacia pachyceras

Soil microbial population play a crucial role in sustaining the terrestrial plant community Understanding the microbial dynamics is therefore, of utmost importance in order to understand the ecosystem balance and biodiversity conservation. Acacia is a rare and endangered tree from Kuwait. The bulk soil communities are expected to play an important role in sustaining plant growth and general health of the “lonely tree” as it is popularly known. In the present investigation, we applied the shot-gun metagenomic approach to screen the bacterial communities associated with the bulk soil in vicinity of the surviving tree specimen Bacterial population were overwhelming with Actinobacteria as the dominant phyla. The most abundant genus was Kocuria (relative abundance-7 ± 0.4%). eggNOG clusters of unknown functions were the most prevalent function followed by amino acid transport and metabolism. The most dominant CAZyme was Glycoside hydrolases and KEGG pathway were headed by Metabolism. Metastats analysis revealed significantly differentially abundant genera in APSL1, APSL2 and APSL3. A principal component analysis distributed the bulk soil communities into three distinct clusters. We found that bacterial communities in the bulk soil of A. pachyceras were unique and possessed typical functions most likely to sustain the tree growth and survival.