BAT Seminar: Plant Microbiome: A Case Study on Duckweeds

BAT Online Seminar 2 Topic: Plant Microbiome: A Case Study on Duckweeds Speaker: Prof. Arinthip Thamchaipenet, Ph.D., from Kasetsart University, Thailand Abstract: Beneficial plant-associated microbes promote growth, enhance stress resilience, protect against phytopathogens, and boost host immunity. In this study, duckweed-associated bacteria were investigated through metagenomic analysis to serve as a model for plant microbiome dynamics. Using V3–V4 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing, we demonstrated core microbiomes of different duckweed species and the surrounding water. Under nutrient-deficient stress, overall microbial diversity decreased across most duckweed subtypes; however, specific bacterial taxa proliferated, suggesting a targeted adaptive mechanism. Employing full-length 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing provided high-resolution taxonomic identification at the species level, confirming that the duckweed microbiome is robustly reshaped by environmental stress. Furthermore, critical methodological challenges in plant metagenomics, specifically primer-association biases and host chloroplast contamination will be addressed. By leveraging long-read shotgun metagenomic sequencing, high-quality metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) were successfully recovered. These MAGs revealed metabolic pathways involved in stress resilience, nutrient cycling, biodegradation, and nutritional value enhancement of duckweed. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that duckweed microbiomes are actively shaped by host-association and environmental factors rather than random microbial assemblages. Consequently, isolating these target strains offers a promising avenue for developing stable, natural synthetic microbial communities (nSynComs) to engineer high-value duckweed systems. Keywords: #duckweeds, #metagenomes, #16S #rRNA #amplicon #sequencing, #long-read #metagenome #sequencing, #metagenome-assembled #genomes (MAGs) Recorded on May 22nd, 2026 Organizer: Bioinformatics Academic Association in Thailand and Hub of Talents for Bioinformatics in Thailand