Abstract
High-throughput sequencing of taxon-specific loci, or DNA metabarcoding, has become an invaluable tool for investigating the composition of plant-associated fungal communities and for elucidating plant–fungal interactions. While sequencing fungal communities has become routine, there remain numerous potential sources of systematic error that can introduce biases and compromise metabarcoding data. This chapter presents a protocol for DNA metabarcoding of the leaf mycobiome based on current best practices to minimize errors through careful laboratory practices and validation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Caporaso JG, Lauber CL, Walters WA, Berg-Lyons D, Huntley J, Fierer N et al (2012) Ultra-hight-throughput microbial analysis on the Illumina HiSeq and MiSeq platforms. ISME J 6:1621–1624
Schloss PD, Gevers D, Westcott SL (2011) Reducing the effects of PCR amplification and sequencing artifacts on 16S rRNA-based studies. PLoS One 6:e27310
Lee CK, Herbold CW, Polson SW, Wommack KE, Williamson SJ, McDonald IR et al (2012) Groundtruthing next-gen sequencing for microbial ecology-biases and errors in community structure estimates from PCR amplicon pyrosequencing. PLoS One 7:e44224
Lindahl BD, Nilsson RH, Tedersoo L, Abarenkov K, Carlsen T, Kjøller R et al (2013) Fungal community analysis by high-throughput sequencing of amplified markers—a user’s guide. New Phytol 199:288–299
Arnold AE, Maynard Z, Gilbert GS, Coley PD, Kusar TA (2000) Are tropical endophytes hyperdiverse? Ecol Lett 3:267–274
Hardoim PR, van Overbeek LS, Berg G, Pirttilä AM, Compant S, Campisano A et al (2015) The hidden world within plants: ecological and evolutionary considerations for defining functioning of microbial endophytes. Microbiol Mol Biol Rev 79:293–320
Herbold CW, Pelikan C, Kuzyk O, Hausmann B, Angel R, Berry D et al (2015) A flexible and economical barcoding approach for highly multiplexed amplicon sequencing of diverse target genes. Front Microbiol 6:1–8
Harrison JG, Forister ML, Parchman TL, Kock GW (2016) Vertical stratification of the foliar fungal community in the world’s tallest trees. Am J Bot 103:2087–2095
Bahnweg G, Heller W, Stich S, Knappe C, Betz G, Heerdt C et al (2005) Beech leaf colonization by the endophyte Apiognomonia errabunda dramatically depends on light exposure and climatic conditions. Plant Biol 7:659–669
Rai M, Agarkar G (2016) Plant-fungal interactions: what triggers the fungi to switch among lifestyles? Crit Rev Microbiol 42:428–438
López-González RC, Gómez-Cornelio S, De la Rosa-García SC, Garrido E, Oropeza-Mariano O et al (2017) The age of lima bean leaves influences the richness and diversity of the endophytic fungal community, but not the antagonistic effect of endophytes against Colletotrichum lindemuthianum. Fungal Ecol 26:1–10
Erickson RO, Michelini FJ (1957) The plastochron index. Am J Bot 44:297–305
Meicenheimer RD (2014) The plastochron index: still useful after nearly six decades. Am J Bot 101:1821–1835
Greenfield M, Pareja R, Ortiz V, Gómez-Jiménez MI, Vega FE, Parsa S (2015) A novel method to scale up fungal endophyte isolations. Biocontrol Sci Tech 25(10):1208–1212
Nguyen NH, Smith D, Peay K, Kennedy P (2015) Parsing ecological signal from noise in next generation amplicon sequencing. New Phytol 205:1289–1393
Stevens JL, Jackson RL, Olson JB (2013) Slowing PCR ramp speed reduces chimera formation from environmental samples. J Microbiol Methods 93:203–205
Callahan BJ, McMurdie PJ, Rosen MJ, Han AW, Johnson AJA, Holmes SP (2016) DADA2: high-resolution sample inferences from Illumina amplicon data. Nat Methods 13:581–583
Schloss PD, Westcott SL, Ryabin T, Hall JR, Hartmann M, Hollister EB et al (2009) Introducing mothur: open-source, platform-independent, community-supported software for describing and comparing microbial communities. Appl Environ Microbiol 75:7537–7541
Anslan S, Bahram M, Hiiesalu I, Tedersoo L (2017) PipeCraft: flexible open-source toolkit for bioinformatics analysis of custom high-throughput amplicon sequencing data. Mol Ecol Resour 17(6):e234–e240. https://doi.org/10.1111/1755-0998.12692
Gweon HS, Oliver A, Taylor J, Booth T, Gibbs M, Read DS et al (2015) PIPITS: an automated pipeline for analysis of fungal internal transcribed spacer sequences from the Illumina sequencing platform. Methods Ecol Evol 6:973–980
Caporaso JG, Kuczynski J, Stombaugh J, Bittinger K, Bushman FD, Costello EK et al (2010) QIIME allows analysis of high-throughput community sequencing data. Nat Methods 7:335–336
Edgar RC (2013) UPARSE: highly accurate OTU sequences from microbial amplicon reads. Nat Methods 10:996–998
Schmidt TSB, Matias Rodrigues JF, von Mering C (2015) Limits to robustness and reproducibility in the demarcation of operational taxonomic units. Environ Microbiol 17:1689–1706
Schoch CL, Seifert KA, Huhndorf S, Robert V, Spouge JL, Levesque CA et al (2012) Nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed space (ITS) region as a universal DNA barcode marker for fungi. PNAS 109:6241–6246
Gardes M, Bruns TD (1993) ITS primers with enhanced specificity for basidiomycetes—application to the identification of mycorrhizae and rusts. Mol Ecol 2:113–118
White TJ, Bruns T, Lee S, Taylor J (1990) Amplification and direct sequencing of fungal ribosomal RNA genes for phylogenetics. In: Innis MA, Gelfand DH, Sninsky J, White TJ (eds) PCR protocols: a guide to methods and applications. Academic Press, London, pp 315–322
Smith DP, Peay KG (2014) Sequence depth, not PCR replication, improves ecological inference from next generation DNA sequencing. PLoS One 9(2):e90234
Tedersoo L, Bahram M, Polme S, Koljalg U, Yorou NS, Wijesundera R et al (2014) Global diversity and geography of soil fungi. Science 346:1256688–1256688
Toju H, Tanabe AS, Yamamoto S, Sato H (2012) High-coverage ITS primers for the DNA-based identification of ascomycetes and basidiomycetes in environmental samples. PLoS One 7(7):e40863
Ihrmark K, Bödeker ITM, Cruz-Martinez K, Friberg H, Kubartova A, Schenck J et al (2012) New primers to amplify the fungal ITS2 region—evaluation by 454-sequencing of artificial and natural communities. FEMS Microbiol Ecol 82:666–677
Taylor DL, Walters WA, Lennon NJ, Bochicchio J, Krohn A, Caporaso JG et al (2016) Accurate estimation of fungal diversity and abundance through improved lineage-specific primers optimized for Illumina amplicon sequencing. App Environ Microbiol 82:7217–7226
Lundberg DS, Yourstone S, Mieczkowski P, Jones CD, Dangl JL (2013) Practical innovations for high-throughput amplicon sequencing. Nat Methods 10:999–1002
Vestheim H, Jarman SN (2008) Blocking primers to enhance PCR amplification of rare sequences in mixed samples—a case study on prey DNA in Antarctic krill stomachs. Front Zool 5:12
Brown SP, Rigdon-Huss AR, Jumpponen A (2014) Analyses of ITS and LSU gene regions provide congruent results on fungal community responses. Fungal Ecol 9:65–68
Halwachs B, Madhusudhan N, Krause R, Nilsson RH, Moissl-Eichinger C, Högenauer C et al (2017) Critical issues in mycobiota analysis. Front Microbiol 8:180. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2017.00180
Mueller RC, Gallegos LV, Kuske CR (2016) A new fungal large subunit ribosomal RNA primer for high-throughput sequencing surveys. FEMS Microbiol Ecol 92:fiv153
Amend AS, Martiny AC, Allison SD, Berlemont R, Goulden ML, Lu Y et al (2016) Microbial response to simulated global change is phylogenetically conserved and linked with functional potential. ISME J 10:109–118
Berriti A, Desirò A, Visentin S, Zecca O, Bonfante P (2017) ITS fungal barcoding primers vs 18S AMF-specific primers reveal similar AMF-based diversity patterns in roots and soils of three mountain systems. Environ Microbiol Rep 9(5):658–667. https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-2229.12574
Blaalid R, Kumar S, Nilsson RH, Abarenkov K, Kirk PM, Kauserud H (2013) ITS1 versus ITS2 as DNA metabarcodes for fungi. Mol Ecol Resour 13:218–224
Bellemain E, Carlsen T, Brochmann C, Coissas E, Taberlet P, Kauserud H (2010) ITS as an environmental DNA barcode for fungi: an in silico approach reveals potential PCR biases. BMC Microbiol 10:189
Anderson IC, Cairney JWG (2004) Diversity and ecology of soil fungal communities: increased understanding through the application of molecular techniques. Environ Microbiol 6:769–779
Berry D, Mahfoudh KB, Wagner M, Loy A (2011) Barcoded primers used in multiplex amplicon pyrosequencing bias amplification. App Environ Microbiol 77:7846–7849
Toju H, Tanabe AS, Ishii HA (2016) Ericaceous plant-fungus network in a harsh alpine-subalpine environment. Mol Ecol 25:3242–3257
Oliver AK, Brown SP, Callaham MA Jr, Jumpponen A (2015) Polymerase matters: non-proofreading enzymes inflate fungal community richness estimates by up to 15%. Fungal Ecol 15:86–89
Gohl DM, Vangay P, Garbe J, MacLean A, Hauge A, Becker A, Gould TJ, Clayton JB, Johnson TJ, Hunter R, Knights D, Beckman KB (2016) Systematic improvement of amplicon marker gene methods for increased accuracy in microbiome studies. Nat Biotechnol 34(9):942–952
Lahr DJG, Katz LA (2009) Reducing the impact of PCR-mediated recombination in molecular evolution and environmental studies using a new-generation high-fidelity DNA polymerase. BioTechniques 47:857–863
Aas AB, Davey ML, Kauserud H (2017) ITS all right mama: investigating the formation of chimeric sequences in the ITS2 region by DNA metabarcoding analysis of fungal mock communities in different complexities. Mol Ecol Resour 17:730–741
Brown SP, Ferrer A, Dalling JW, Heath KD (2016) Don’t put all your eggs in one basket: a cost-effective and powerful method to optimize primer choice for rRNA environmental community analysis using the Fluidigm access array. Mol Ecol Resour 16:946–956
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to Maggie Wagner, Edward Barge, Kyle Gervers, Thomas Wolpert, and Wenbo Ma for helpful feedback in the development of this protocol. This research was supported by the Department of Energy Feedstock Genomics Award 219086 (PEB) and the National Science Foundation Science Engineering and Education for Sustainability Award 1314095 (PEB).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Brown, S.P., Leopold, D.R., Busby, P.E. (2018). Protocols for Investigating the Leaf Mycobiome Using High-Throughput DNA Sequencing. In: Ma, W., Wolpert, T. (eds) Plant Pathogenic Fungi and Oomycetes. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1848. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8724-5_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8724-5_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-8723-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-8724-5
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols