Simplified and representative bacterial community of maize roots

Many species of microbes colonize plants as members of complex communities. The high complexity of such plant microbial communities poses great difficulty for any experimental analyses aimed at understanding the principles underlying such microbe-plant interactions. In this work, we assembled a greatly simplified, yet representative, synthetic bacterial model community that allowed us to study the community assembly dynamics and function on axenic maize seedlings. This model community interfered with the growth of a plant pathogenic fungus, thus protecting the plant. This model system will prove to be a useful system for future research on plant-microbe interactions.