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On March 24, Xie Qi's team from the Institute of Genetics and Development of the Chinese Academy of Sciences published a major breakthrough in the journal Science, finding that the main alkali-resistant gene can increase grain yield by about 20%! Using sorghum as a material, the study unlocked the "storage code" of the main alkali-resistant gene AT1. The study also showed that the gene can significantly increase the yield of sorghum, rice, corn, wheat, corn and millet in moderate to severe saline-alkali land. This research is of great significance to the food security of our country and even the world. Mr. Xie Qi calculated that if the gene is used in 20% of the saline-alkali lands in the world, the annual production of at least 250 million tons of grain can be increased.
In fact, plants do not exist alone, but have a variety of microbial communities related to plant roots, phyllosphere, rhizosphere and tissues. The huge functional potential of the plant-associated microbiome has been confirmed, and microbiome technology has quietly highlighted its strength on the "battlefield" of increasing crop yield and efficiency.
In the past six months, scientists in the field of agriculture in China have published articles in several authoritative core journals, explaining the application of plant microbiome in agriculture. In December 2022, Cai Lei's team from the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences published a paper in Nature Communications explaining the mechanism of cross-border synthetic microbiota inhibiting tomato plant wilt, which is of great scientific significance for the green prevention and control of plant diseases, and also for the development of disease-resistant microbial preparations. Development provides new ideas. In June 2022, Ai Chao's team from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences revealed the microbiome of maize xylem capable of nitrogen fixation, and related articles were published on Nature Communications. The study revealed that in the xylem juice of maize plants, there is a highly conserved core bacterial microbiota with nitrogen-fixing ability, which can provide nitrogen nutrition for maize, similar to the human "gut microbiota". These microorganisms can contribute 11.8% of the nitrogen accumulated in the corn stalk, which is a promising resource that can be deeply exploited to improve crop productivity in the future.
my country's plant microbiome research is gradually showing a trend of late development, and there are many gaps to be filled in the interaction mechanism of 'crop-microbiome' in the agricultural production environment. Among them, the sample preparation of the plant's own microbiome is the first link that needs a breakthrough. The second-generation plant metagenomic sample preparation kit specially launched by QIAGEN for researchers in the field of agriculture and molecular biology—DNeasy Plant Pro Kit comes with pre - installed The UFO-type stainless steel bead grinding tube solves the problem of nucleic acid adsorption when the mortar is used to process samples, and the independent grinding of 24 plant samples at the same time greatly reduces the time required for sample processing. The edge of the UFO stainless steel bead is like scissors, quickly and completely shreds the plant leaves. The more thoroughly the sample is broken, the more fully the release of its nucleic acid substances. The increase in nucleic acid yield was particularly pronounced for samples with low nucleic acid content.
In addition, it is its unique ability to remove polysaccharides and polyphenols. Impurities like polysaccharides and polyphenols cannot be completely removed by washing alone. The powerful combination of the unique inhibitor removal technology (IRT) and phenol removal reagent (PPS) removes polysaccharides and polyphenols by precipitation, getting rid of the trouble of mucous membrane blockage, and there is no inhibitory reaction when doing PCR experiments.
Soil, as a microbial seed bank, provides plants with rich microbial resources. The research on agricultural microbes, especially the interaction between plants and microbes, not only involves the microbes of the crop itself, but also should pay attention to soil microbes. The premise of studying soil microorganisms is to obtain the corresponding genetic material. Due to regional and environmental differences, the soil is diverse and its components are relatively complex. Different types of microorganisms are tightly adsorbed on the surface of soil particles, which makes it difficult for microorganisms to lyse, and the soil contains a large amount of Humic acid, fulvic acid and other humic substances produced by the metabolism of animals and plants, humic acid, fulvic acid, like DNA and RNA, are macromolecular hydrophilic anionic polymers, which are easily extracted together with nucleic acids in the final step. This leads to inaccurate quantification and affects downstream PCR, library construction, and digital PCR experiments.
All these problems can be easily solved by QIAGEN’s second generation—MagAttract PowerSoil Pro DNA Kit!
MagAttract PowerSoil Pro DNA Kit is a high-throughput kit for extracting 1-96 microbial DNA from complex and diverse soil and feces samples based on the magnetic bead method , especially for viscous or membrane-clogging samples. Magnetic bead purification saves time and effort And the nucleic acid purity is higher.
This kit is fully upgraded in the two key stages of microbial nucleic acid extraction. The material and particle size of the grinding beads used in the lysis stage have been optimized according to the authoritative research results of Nature Biotechnology, and are pre-installed in PowerBead Pro grinding tubes or 96-well grinding plates . Biased homogeneous lysis of microorganisms fully releases nucleic acids while avoiding background microbial contamination from other sources. The upgraded inhibitor removal technology is also obviously different from conventional buffer removal and purification column removal. On the basis of minimizing the impact on nucleic acid yield, it can quickly and effectively remove high-content inhibitors at room temperature. Focus! The key is that you can also arrange the experiment super flexible!
The bead milling process can be flexibly selected according to the number of samples processed each time. A 96-hole grinding plate can be selected to achieve homogeneous lysis of 2x96 samples within 5 minutes. PowerBead Pro grinding tubes can also be selected to perform 1- on the Vortex adapter that meets the speed requirements. For the lysis of 24 samples, if the laboratory has been equipped with PowerLyzer 24 or has a higher demand for speed, it can directly call out the custom program to perform three-dimensional equivalent lysis within tens of seconds. Pre-packed with mixed particle size grinding beads can help disperse soil or feces particles to effectively increase the probability of collision with microorganisms, and then homogeneously lyse all bacteria, fungi and archaea in any type of soil or feces samples to help you obtain higher microbial abundance degree information.
In the purification stage after lysis, the automatic purification of 1-96 samples can be realized directly on the Thermo Scientific KingFisher Flex nucleic acid extractor, and it is also possible for the newbies who have just entered the group to prepare the magnetic frame for practice, pay attention to blowing and aspiration of the supernatant, blowing and aspiration Supernatant, one plate of 96, one plate of 96, one plate of 96, easily complete the stable purification of hundreds of samples, and the nucleic acids obtained by highly repeatable operations can successfully pass the quality control of various downstream experiments.
If you still want to know more about the details of the above products, or you have different sample preparation needs, we will bring you two online lectures on the difficult points of nucleic acid extraction for metagenomic or metatranscriptome research on April 10 and 19 , to explain in detail the application of QIAGEN microbial sample preparation solutions in the three hot areas of microbiome research.
• Sharing of gut and soil metagenome and metatranscriptome sample preparation skills
• Sample preparation scheme and skill sharing for environmental microbiome research
Welcome to scan the QR code above to reserve the topic you want to hear, and you will have the opportunity to receive a small gift!
If you are unable to attend on time, we will send the lecture materials to your reserved mailbox after the lecture.