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A pot experiment was performed to investigate the effect of phytoremediation (CK, using tall fescue), fungi remediation (GV, using Glomus versiforme), bacterial remediation (PS, using Pseudomonas fluorescens Ps2-6), and microbial-phytoremediation (GVPS, using three species) on removing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and the microbial diversity in soils. Inoculation with G. versiforme and P. fluorescens could increase the biomass of tall fescue and the accumulation of phenanthrene (PHE) and pyrene (PYR) in plants. Among them, the highest PHE and PYR removal efficiencies and highest biomass of tall fescue were observed in the GVPS treatment and the microbial diversity in contaminated soil was changed, the result revealed that Proteobacteria and Ascomycota were the dominant bacterial phylum and fungal phylum in all treatments, while more Proteobacteria were detected in GVPS treatment. At the genus level, the abundance of Sphingomonas (3.17%), Pseudomonas (2.05%), and Fusarium (8.65%) treated with GVPS increased compared with other treatments. These pieces of evidence contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in the combined microbial-phytoremediation strategies for PAHs-contaminated soils, especially the effects of microbial-phytoremediation on rhizosphere microbial diversity. Inoculation with G. versiforme and P. fluorescens could increase PHE and PYR removal efficiencies, the biomass of tall fescue, microbial diversity, and the abundance of Proteobacteria, Sphingomonas, Pseudomonas, and Fusarium in (PHE + PYR)-contaminated soils.

Composting plants are an important source of airborne fungi. At present, no research has been reported on differences in the types and abundance of escaped fungi in different working areas, which makes it very difficult to comprehensively assess the ecological health risks of the air in composting plants. In light of this situation, this study collected air samples from the composting, packaging, office, and downwind areas of the composting plants and used high-throughput sequencing technology to analyze and compare the biological diversity and community structure of airborne fungi in the four areas. The source of airborne fungi in offices and downwind areas was further traced. The results showed that the highest abundance and diversity of airborne fungi were found in the packing and composting areas of the composting plants. Ascomycota and Basidiomycota were two fungal phyla with the highest relative abundance in the four regions. Overall, the distribution of dominant fungal genera differed

The temporal heterogeneity of nitrogen availability in soils is increasing due to agricultural deposition. We here compared the effects of gradually increasing nitrogen deposition rate and its increasing temporal heterogeneity patterns on the functional traits of seedlings of exotic species Rhus typhina and the native species Rhus chinensis. Nitrogen deposition rates of 0, 8, 20 g N m−2 year−1 and constant, single-peak, and double-peak nitrogen were added to simulate deposition rate and temporal heterogeneity. After 60 days of treatment, R. typhina seedlings had several advantageous growth trait values, such as higher total biomass production, but lower phenotypic plasticity than R. chinensis seedlings. R. typhina seedlings also had higher phenotypic integration, measured as the correlation among functional traits. The increased nitrogen deposition rate affected several traits of the two species differently. Thus, while R. chinensis seedlings allocated more biomass to leaves and less to roots with increasing N deposition, R. typhina seedlings had stable biomass allocation among all N treatments. Chlorophyll content, leaf phosphorus concentration, and water use efficiency increased, but the maximum net photosynthetic rate decreased, with N availability in R. chinensis, but not in R. typhina. Temporal heterogeneity had no significant effect on the total biomass of R. typhina and R. chinensis seedlings. Overall, the performance of R. typhina is better than that of R. chinensis seedlings under different nitrogen deposition treatments, which is due to the significantly advantageous trait values and greater phenotypic integration of R. typhina seedlings, whereas R. chinensis seedlings have higher phenotypic plasticity.

Supplemental material, Supplementary material, for Evaluation of Metabolites and Antioxidant Activity in Pumpkin Species by Hafiz Muhammad Khalid Abbas, He-Xun Huang, Wen-Jie Huang, Shu-Dan Xue, Shi-Juan Yan, Ting-Quan Wu, Jun-Xing Li and Yu-Juan Zhong in Natural Product Communications

Additional file 1: Table S1. No of genes in different C. moschata fruit samples. Table S2. Statistic of sequencing and de novo assembling of transcriptome in C. moschata. Figure S1. Annotation of C. moschata unigenes. Table S3. No of unigenes assigned to different types of C. moschata pathways. Figure S2. KEGG pathways enrichment analysis of DEGs of C. moschata. Table S4. Genes involved in sucrose metabolism. Figure S3. Relative expression and RPKM of different genes from sucrose pathway. Table S5. Genes involved in carotenoids biosynthesis pathways. Figure S4. Relative expression and RPKM of different genes from carotenoids biosynthesis pathway. Table S6. List of primers used for qRT-PCR.

In order to determine the influence of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF, Glomus versiforme) and plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR, Pseudomonas fluorescens, PS2-6) on degradation of phenanthrene (PHE) and pyrene (PYR) and the change of microbial community structure in soils planted with tall fescue (Festuca elata), four treatments were set up in phenanthrene (PHE) and pyrene (PYR) contamined soil: i.e., tall fescue (CK), AMF + tall fescue (GV), PGPR + tall fescue (PS) and AMF + PGPR + tall fescue (GVPS), PHE and PYR dissipation in the soil and accumulated in the tall fescue were investigated. Our results showed that highest removal percentage of PHE and PYR in contaminated soil as well as biomass of tall fescue were observed in GVPS. PHE and PYR accumulation by tall fescue roots were higher than shoots, the mycorrhizal status was best manifested in the roots of tall fescue inoculated with GVPS, and GVPS significantly increased the number of PGPR colonization in tall fescue rhizosphere soil. And paired-end Illumina HiSeq analysis of 16S rRNA and Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) gene amplicons were also employed to study change of bacterial and fungal communities structure in four treatments. GVPS positively affected the speices and abundance of bacteria and fungi in PHE and PYR contaminated soil, an average of 71,144 high quality bacterial 16S rDNA tags and 102,455 ITS tags were obtained in GVPS, and all of them were assigned to 6,327 and 825 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) at a 97% similarity, respectively. Sequence analysis revealed that Proteobacteria was the dominant bacterial phylum, Ascomycota was the dominant fungal phylum in all treatments, whereas Proteobacteria and Glomeromycota were the most prevalent bacterial and fungal phyla in GVPS, respectively. And in the generic level, Planctomyces is the richest bacterial genus, and Meyerozyma is the richest fungal genus in all treatments, whereas Sphingomona was the dominant bacterial genus, while the dominant fungi was Fusarium in GVPS. Overall, our findings revealed that application of AMF and PGPR had an effective role in improving the growth characteristics, root colonization of F. elata and soil microbial community structure in PHE and PYR contaminated soils, but no obvious in degradation efficiencies of PAHs as compared to the control.