Quantitative Microbiome Profiling Facilitates Convenient Detection of Root-Associated Fungi in an Alpine Meadow

Abstract

Next-generation sequencing is widely used for microbiome characterisation across multiple samples. However, current amplicon sequencing techniques are limited because they primarily offer microbial taxon relative abundance profiles, which do not accurately reflect the actual environmental abundances. Here, relative microbiome profiling (RMP) and quantitative microbiome profiling (QMP) were employed to analyse the root-associated fungal communities of 20 alpine meadow plant species. Noteworthy, the microbial load of root-associated fungi varied among the host plants. There were inconsistent patterns of the major fungal genera among plant species between QMP and RMP approaches, and RMP underestimated root-associated fungal community dissimilarities across different hosts. These findings led to the conclusion that QMP contributes to a better understanding of root-associated fungal dynamics and their ecological and functional processes.