Hotspots of root-exuded amino acids are created within a rhizosphere-on-a-chip

The rhizosphere is a challenging ecosystem to study from a systems biology perspective due to its diverse chemical, physical, and biological characteristics. In the past decade, microfluidic platforms ( e.g. plant-on-a-chip) have created an alternative way to study whole rhizosphere organisms, like...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Lab on a chip 2022-03, Vol.22 (5), p.954-963
Main Authors: Aufrecht, Jayde, Khalid, Muneeba, Walton, Courtney L, Tate, Kylee, Cahill, John F, Retterer, Scott T
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amino acids
Amino Acids - analysis
Amino Acids - metabolism
BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Carbon compounds
Complexity
Ecosystem
Exudation
Lab-On-A-Chip Devices
Mass spectrometry
Microfluidics
Microorganisms
Molecular structure
Plant Roots
Rhizosphere
Soil - chemistry
Soil Microbiology
Soil structure
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Summary:The rhizosphere is a challenging ecosystem to study from a systems biology perspective due to its diverse chemical, physical, and biological characteristics. In the past decade, microfluidic platforms ( e.g. plant-on-a-chip) have created an alternative way to study whole rhizosphere organisms, like plants and microorganisms, under reduced-complexity conditions. However, in reducing the complexity of the environment, it is possible to inadvertently alter organism phenotype, which biases laboratory data compared to in situ experiments. To build back some of the complexity of the rhizosphere in a fully-defined, parameterized approach we have developed a rhizosphere-on-a-chip platform that mimics the physical structure of soil. We demonstrate, through computational simulation, how this synthetic soil structure can influence the emergence of molecular "hotspots" and "hotmoments" that arise naturally from the plant's exudation of labile carbon compounds. We establish the amenability of the rhizosphere-on-a-chip for long-term culture of Brachypodium distachyon , and experimentally validate the presence of exudate hotspots within the rhizosphere-on-a-chip pore spaces using liquid microjunction surface sampling probe mass spectrometry. A soil-mimicking rhizosphere-on-a-chip is amenable for long-term plant growth and enables simulation of root exudate diffusion and experimental validation of carbon hotspot formation from the interaction between roots and the synthetic soil grains.
ISSN:1473-0197
1473-0189
1473-0189
DOI:10.1039/d1lc00705j