Investigation of the fungal community structures of imported wheat using high-throughput sequencing technology

PLoS One. 2017 Feb 27;12(2):e0171894. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0171894. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

This study introduced the application of high-throughput sequencing techniques to the investigation of microbial diversity in the field of plant quarantine. It examined the microbial diversity of wheat imported into China, and established a bioinformatics database of wheat pathogens based on high-throughput sequencing results. This study analyzed the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of fungi through Illumina Miseq sequencing to investigate the fungal communities of both seeds and sieve-through. A total of 758,129 fungal ITS sequences were obtained from ten samples collected from five batches of wheat imported from the USA. These sequences were classified into 2 different phyla, 15 classes, 33 orders, 41 families, or 78 genera, suggesting a high fungal diversity across samples. Apairwise analysis revealed that the diversity of the fungal community in the sieve-through is significantly higher than those in the seeds. Taxonomic analysis showed that at the class level, Dothideomycetes dominated in the seeds and Sordariomycetes dominated in the sieve-through. In all, this study revealed the fungal community composition in the seeds and sieve-through of the wheat, and identified key differences in the fungal community between the seeds and sieve-through.

MeSH terms

  • Biodiversity
  • China
  • Commerce
  • Computational Biology
  • DNA, Fungal / genetics
  • DNA, Intergenic / genetics
  • Fungi / genetics*
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing*
  • International Cooperation
  • Phylogeny
  • Polymerase Chain Reaction
  • Soil Microbiology
  • Triticum / microbiology*
  • United States

Substances

  • DNA, Fungal
  • DNA, Intergenic

Grants and funding

This work is supported by The Science and technology plan projects of The General administration of quality supervision, inspection and Quarantine of the People’s Republic of China (2015IK267); The Science and technology projects of the Shenzhen Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau (SZ2015219).