Role of microbes in plant protection using intersection of nanotechnology and biology

Published online: 15 Aug 2018Plant pathogens are one of the dominating components which restrain crop productivity. Preliminary step headed for managing plant disease is to accurately recognize the pathogen under lab, glasshouse, and field conditions. Modern approach, such as culture-based, antibody-based rapid methods and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (Q-PCR), entrusts on multiple assays to precisely identify the specific plant pathogens which are further time-consuming and lack high sensitivity. Nanobiotechnology ameliorates crop productivity through transmission of genes to target sites for breeding of varieties resistant to different plant pathogens with focus on improving sensitivity. Intersection of nanotechnology and biology also improves specificity and agility of pathogen detection which further facilitates crop disease management. Bio-fabrication of nanoparticles like silver (Ag) and copper (Cu) is used as novel antimicrobials for the management of pathogenic microorganisms that inhibits fungal hyphae and conidial germination in agricultural crops. Biological agents reduce metal which leads to capping of nanoparticles through the secretion of various enzymes. A modern class of protein nanocompartments called as encapsulins that encapsulate cargo proteins are found in bacteria and archaea. Nanobiotechnology also reduces detection times of crop pathogens and cost by the development of biosensors and phage proteins. In this chapter we emphasize on microbial semblance in nanobiotechnology applications that precede to integrated disease management of agricultural crops including precise diagnostic layout of plant diseases and modification of crop environments to adversely affect crop pathogens

The evolution of living beings started with prokaryotes and in interaction with prokaryotes

In natural world, no organism exists in absolute isolation, and thus every organism must interact with the environment and other organisms. Next-generation sequencing technologies are increasingly revealing that most of the cells in the environment resist cultivation in the laboratory and several prokaryotic divisions have no known cultivated representatives. Based on this, we hypothesize that species that live together in the same ecosystem are more or less dependent upon each other and are very large in diversity and number, outnumbering those that can be isolated in single-strain laboratory culture. In natural environments, bacteria and archaea interact with other organisms (viruses, protists, fungi, animals, plants, and human) in complex ecological networks, resulting in positive, negative, or no effect on one or another of the interacting partners. These interactions are sources of ecological forces such as competitive exclusion, niche partitioning, ecological adaptation, or horizontal gene transfers, which shape the biological evolution. In this chapter, we review the biological interactions involving prokaryotes in natural ecosystems, including plant, animal, and human microbiota, and give an overview of the insights into the evolution of living beings. We conclude that studies of biological interactions, including multipartite interactions, are sources of novel knowledge related to the biodiversity of living things, the functioning of ecosystems, the evolution of the cellular world, and the ecosystem services to the living beings