Measuring Bacterial Colonization on Arabidopsis thaliana Roots in Hydroponic Condition

Summary

Colonization of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) in the rhizosphere is essential for its growth-promoting effect. It is necessary to standardize the method of detection of bacterial rhizosphere colonization. Here, we describe a reproducible method for quantifying bacterial colonization on the root surface.

Abstract

Measuring bacterial colonization on Arabidopsis thaliana root is one of the most frequent experiments in plant-microbe interaction studies. A standardized method for measuring bacterial colonization in the rhizosphere is necessary to improve reproducibility. We first cultured sterile A.thaliana in hydroponic conditions and then inoculated the bacterial cells in the rhizosphere at a final concentration of OD₆₀₀ of 0.01. At 2 days post-inoculation, the root tissue was harvested and washed three times in sterile water to remove the uncolonized bacterial cells. The roots were then weighed, and the bacterial cells colonized on the root were collected by vortex. The cell suspension was diluted in a gradient with a phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) buffer, followed by plating onto a Luria-Bertani (LB) agar medium. The plates were incubated at 37 °C for 10 h, and then, the single colonies on LB plates were counted and normalized to indicate the bacterial cells colonized on roots. This method is used to detect bacterial colonization in the rhizosphere in mono-interaction conditions, with good reproducibility.

Introduction

There are quantitative and qualitative methods for detecting rhizosphere colonization by a single bacterial strain. For the qualitative method, a strain that constitutively expresses fluorescence should be used, and the fluorescence distribution and intensity should be examined under fluorescence microscopy or laser confocal instruments^1,2. Those strategies can well reflect bacterial colonization in situ³, but they are not as accurate as traditional plate counting methods in quantification. Besides, due to the limitation of only displaying partial root zones under the microscop....

Protocol

1. Sterile hydroponic A. thaliana cultivation

1. Prepare A. thaliana seedlings.
   1. Prepare culture A. thaliana seedlings medium, which consists of 1/2 MS medium (Murashige and Skoog) with 2% (wt/vol) sucrose and 0.9% (wt/vol) agar.
   2. Pour the prepared sterilization medium into sterile square Petri dishes (13 cm x 13 cm) before solidification. Avoid air drying to maintain humidity.
   3. Immerse A. thaliana seeds in a 2 m.......

Discussion

To achieve good reproducibility, there are four critical steps for the colonization detection process of this protocol. First, it is necessary to ensure that the number of inoculated bacteria cells is exactly the same in each experiment. Second, controlling the uncolonized bacteria cleaning intensity with sterile water is also necessary. Third, every sample dilution process needs to be vortexed before being performed to let the sample be in a complete mixing state to avoid the absorption errors due to the characteristics.......

Materials

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
6-well plate	Corning	3516
Filter cell stainer	Solarbio	F8200-40µm
Microplate reader	Tecan	Infinite M200 PRO
Murashige and Skoog medium	Hopebio	HB8469-5
NaClO	Alfa	L14709
Phytagel	Sigma-Aldrich	P8169
Square petri dish	Ruiai Zhengte	PYM-130
Vortex Genie2	Scientific Industries	G560E