Circadian clocks occur across the kingdoms of life, including some fungi and bacteria present in the root-associated soil known as the rhizosphere. Recent work from Amy Newman and colleagues, published in BMC Biology, has discovered that the circadian clock in Arabidopsis plants affects the rhythmicity of rhizosphere microbial communities This brings into play the exciting question of whether there is a bidirectional rhythmic interaction between plants and their rhizomicrobiome. Here, we discuss how the findings of Newman et al. suggest that soil microbiomes can have both self-sustained and plant-imposed rhythmicity, and the challenges of plant-microbiome circadian clock research.
Keywords: Circadian rhythms; Microbial ecology; Plant-microbe interactions; Rhizomicrobiome.
© 2022. The Author(s).