Culturable endophytic microbial communities in the circumpolar grass, Deschampsia flexuosa in a sub-Arctic inland primary succession are habitat and growth stage specific

Little is known about endophytic microbes in cold climate plants and how their communities are formed. We compared culturable putative endophytic bacteria and fungi in the ecologically important circumpolar grass, Deschampsia flexuosa growing in two successional stages of subarctic sand dune (68 degrees 29N). Sequence analyses of partial 16S rRNA and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences of culturable endophytes showed that diverse bacteria and fungi inhabit different tissues of D.flexuosa. A total of 178 bacterial isolates representing seven taxonomic divisions, Alpha, Beta and Gammaproteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes and Acidobacteria, and 30 fungal isolates representing the phylum Ascomycota were identified. Several endophytes were affiliated with specific plant tissues or successional stages. This first report of bacterial endophytes in D.flexuosa revealed that the genus Pseudomonas is tightly associated with D.flexuosa, and encompassed 39% of the bacterial isolates, and 58% of seed isolates. Based on 16S rRNA and ITS sequence data, most of the D.flexuosa endophytes were closely related to microbes from other cold environments. The majority of seed endophytic bacterial isolates were able to solubilize organic form of phosphate suggesting that these endophytes could play a role in resource mobilization in germinating seeds in nutrient-poor habitat.