[Submitted on 19 Oct 2026]

Republished example · not submitted to CCCURJ. This work, written by or with California Community College students, first appeared in Biotech 11(1):1 (2022) on January 14, 2022 under CC BY 4.0. It is shown here unchanged, with the openly licensed PDF, as an example of the research CCC students do; its authors did not submit it and CCCURJ editors did not review it. Read and cite the original.

Metagenomic Insights into the Composition and Function of Microbes Associated with the Rootzone of Datura inoxia

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the roles that microbes may be playing in the rootzone of the medicinal plant Daturainoxia. We hypothesized that the microbes associated with the Datura rootzone would be significantly different than the similar surrounding fields in composition and function. We also hypothesized that rhizospheric and endophytic microbes would be associated with similar metabolic functions to the plant rootzone they inhabited. The methods employed were microbial barcoding, tests of essential oils against antibiotic resistant bacteria and other soil bacterial isolates, 16S Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) metabarcoding, and Whole Genome Shotgun (WGS) taxonomic and functional analyses. A few of the main bacterial genera of interest that were differentially abundant in the Datura root microbiome were Flavobacterium (p = 0.007), Chitinophaga (p = 0.0007), Pedobacter (p = 6 × 10-5), Bradyhizobium (p = 1 × 10-8), and Paenibacillus (p = 1.46 × 10-6). There was significant evidence that the microbes associated with the Datura rootzone had elevated function related to bacterial chalcone synthase (p = 1.49 × 10-3) and permease genes (p < 0.003). There was some evidence that microbial functions in the Datura rootzone provided precursors to important plant bioactive molecules or were beneficial to plant growth. This is important because these compounds are phyto-protective antioxidants and are precursors to many aromatic bioactive compounds that are relevant to human health. In the context of known interactions, and current results, plants and microbes influence the flavonoid biosynthetic pathways of one other, in terms of the regulation of the phenylpropanoid pathway. This is the first study to focus on the microbial ecology of the Datura rootzone. There are possible biopharmaceutical and agricultural applications of the natural interplay that was discovered during this study of the Datura inoxia rhizosphere.

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