Comparative Analysis of the Endophytic Bacterial Diversity of Populus euphratica Oliv. in Environments of Different Salinity Intensities

Euphrates poplar (Populus euphratica Oliv.), as the only tree species that grows in the desert, has tenacious vitality with the characteristics of cold tolerance, drought tolerance, salt-alkali tolerance, and wind-sand resistance. P. euphratica has a long growth cycle and a high growth rate, which can break wind, fix sand, green the environment, and protect farmland, making it an important afforestation tree species in arid and semiarid areas. The area of P. euphratica in Xinjiang accounts for 91.1% of its area in China. ABSTRACT Populus euphratica Oliv. has a high tolerance for drought, salinity, and alkalinity. The main purpose of this study is to explore the effects of environments of different salinity intensities on endophytic community structure and the possible roles of endophytes in the tolerance of host plants. The characterization of endogenous bacteria in diversity has been investigated by using the Illumina high-throughput sequencing technique. The research showed that endophytic bacteria of P. euphratica in an extremely saline environment had low species diversity, especially in sap tissue. The dominant phyla in all groups were Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroidetes. Notably, Firmicutes (relative abundance >5%) was a different dominant phylum in the samples from the high-saline environment compared with the relatively low-saline-environment group. The linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) analysis found that there were significant differences in different saline environments of Cytophagaceae (family), Rhodobacteraceae (family), and Rhodobacterales (order). These results indicated that the composition of the endogenous bacterial community was related to the growth environment of host plants. The predictive analysis of KEGG pathways and enzymes showed that the abundance of some enzymes and metabolic pathways of endophytes of P. euphratica increased with the increase of soil salinity, and most of the enzymes were related to energy metabolism and carbohydrate metabolism. These findings suggested that the endogenous bacteria of the host plant had different expression mechanisms under different degrees of stress, and this mechanism was very obvious in the distribution of endophytes, while the function of the endogenous bacteria needs to be further explored. IMPORTANCE Euphrates poplar (Populus euphratica Oliv.), as the only tree species that grows in the desert, has tenacious vitality with the characteristics of cold tolerance, drought tolerance, salt-alkali tolerance, and wind-sand resistance. P. euphratica has a long growth cycle and a high growth rate, which can break wind, fix sand, green the environment, and protect farmland, making it an important afforestation tree species in arid and semiarid areas. The area of P. euphratica in Xinjiang accounts for 91.1% of its area in China. Studying the endophytic bacteria of P. euphratica can give people a systematic understanding of it and the adaptability of the endogenous flora to the host and special environments. In this study, by analyzing the endophytic bacteria of P. euphratica in different saline-alkali regions of Xinjiang, it was found that the bacteria in different tissues of P. euphratica changed with the change of soil salinity. Especially in the sap tissue of P. euphratica under extremely high salinity, the diversity of endogenous bacteria was significantly lower than that in other tissues. These differential bacteria under different salinities were mostly related to the stress resistance of themselves and the host. Not only that, we also selected a strain of Bacillus with high stress resistance from the tissues of P. euphratica, which can survive under the extreme conditions of 10% NaCl and pH 11. We obtained a genome completion map of this strain, named it Bacillus haynesii P19 (GenBank accession no. PRJNA648288), and tried to use it for fermentation but in a different work, so as to develop it into a promising industrial fermentation chassis bacterium. Therefore, this study was of great significance for the understanding of endophytic bacteria in P. euphratica and the acquisition of extremophilic microbial resources.