Shotgun metagenomic dataset of leaf endophytic microbiome of the garden sage (Salvia officinalis L.).
Palanisamy M, Babalola OO, Ramalingam S
Plant Microbiome
The microscopic hitchhikers living inside your sage plant's leaves may be shaping the very oils and compounds that make it smell fragrant and work as a medicinal herb—understanding them could explain why homegrown sage sometimes outperforms store-bought.
Inside every sage leaf, invisible communities of bacteria, fungi, and other tiny organisms live without causing disease—these are called endophytes. Researchers used a powerful DNA-reading technique to take a census of all these hidden residents in garden sage for the first time. They filtered out the plant's own DNA to get a clean picture of just the microbial guests, then shared the full dataset so other scientists can build on the work.
Key Findings
Shotgun metagenomics was used to profile all four kingdoms of endophytic microbes (bacteria, fungi, archaea, viruses) simultaneously in garden sage leaves.
Three biological replicates were sequenced on the Illumina NovaSeq X platform, providing a reproducible, high-depth dataset for the species.
Host contamination was removed by mapping reads to the Salvia officinalis reference genome via BWA-MEM, and taxonomic classification was performed with Kraken2.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists mapped the full community of microbes—bacteria, fungi, viruses, and archaea—living inside the leaves of garden sage using high-throughput DNA sequencing, and made the dataset publicly available for other researchers to study.
Abstract Preview
Garden sage (Salvia officinalis L.) is a traditional medicinal plant known for its rich bioactive secondary metabolites. However, there is limited information about the diversity of endophytic micr...
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Species Mentioned
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Salvia officinalis, common sage or sage, is a perennial, evergreen subshrub, with woody stems, grayish leaves, and blue to purplish flowers. It is a member of the mint family (Lamiaceae) and native to the Mediterranean region, though it has been naturalized in many places throughout the world. It...