耶鲁大学Jordan Peccia小组的一项最新研究提出在活的树木中有多种不同的微生物群。2025年8月6日，国际知名学术期刊《自然》发表了这一成果。

课题组人员阐明了栖息和适应木材的微生物群，并进一步专门针对单个寄主树种，揭示了木材是生物多样性的避风港，也是树木健康和森林生态系统功能的潜在关键参与者。小组证明，一棵树的木本组织中大约有一万亿细菌，其微生物群落明显分布在心材和边材之间，每棵树都保持着独特的微生物组，与其他植物组织或生态系统成分的相似性最小。心材微生物群是一个特别独特的生态位，以专门的古细菌和厌氧细菌为特征，驱动了相应的生物地球化学过程。他们的发现支持了植物作为“整体生物”的概念——宿主和相关微生物的综合生态单位——与树木的健康、疾病和功能有关。通过表征树木内部微生物组的组成、结构和功能，他们的工作开辟了了解树木生理学和森林生态学的途径，并为环境微生物学开辟了新的前沿。

据介绍，尽管在各种环境下的微生物组研究取得了重大进展，但地球上最大的生物质库——活树的木材——的微生物组仍未被探索。

附：英文原文

Title: A diverse and distinct microbiome inside living trees

Author: Arnold, Wyatt, Gewirtzman, Jonathan, Raymond, Peter A., Duguid, Marlyse C., Brodersen, Craig R., Brown, Cade, Norbraten, Naomi, Wood, Qespi Tika Vizcarra, Bradford, Mark A., Peccia, Jordan

Issue&Volume: 2025-08-06

Abstract: Despite significant advances in microbiome research across various environments1, the microbiome of Earth’s largest biomass reservoir—the wood of living trees2—remains largely unexplored. Here, we illuminate the microbiome inhabiting and adapted to wood and further specialized to individual host tree species, revealing that wood is a harbour of biodiversity and potential key players in tree health and forest ecosystem functions. We demonstrate that a single tree hosts approximately one trillion bacteria in its woody tissues, with microbial communities distinctly partitioned between heartwood and sapwood, each maintaining unique microbiomes with minimal similarity to other plant tissues or ecosystem components. The heartwood microbiome emerges as a particularly unique ecological niche, distinguished by specialized archaea and anaerobic bacteria driving consequential biogeochemical processes. Our findings support the concept of plants as ‘holobionts’3,4—integrated ecological units of host and associated microorganisms—with implications for tree health, disease and functionality. By characterizing the composition, structure and functions of tree internal microbiomes, our work opens up pathways for understanding tree physiology and forest ecology and establishes a new frontier in environmental microbiology.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09316-0

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09316-0