Table 3.

Functional structure and metabolic diversity in phyllospheric microbial communities detected by culture-independent approaches

Aims of investigations	Objects	Methods	Results	References
Identification of microbial genes encoding bioactivity in endophytes	Leaves and stems of 30 traditional Chinese medical herbs	PCR using primers targeting genes of polyketide synthases (PKS) and nonri bosomal peptide syntheta ses (NRPS)	Presence of PKS and/or NRPS genes in 36% of the samples indicated possible bioactivity by endophytes in the herbs.	Miller et al. (2012)
Impact of biofilm formation by E. coli O157:H7 on metabolic activity of the phyl lospheric community	Leaf lysate of spinach (Spinacia oleracea)	GeoChip microarray	Abundance of genes involved in C-, N- and P-cycling decreased in result of the biofilm formation.	Carter et al. (2012)
Detection of diverse microbial rhodopsins	Leaves of Tamarix nilotica, Glycine max, Arabidopsis thaliana,Trifolium repens, Oryza sativa	Whole metagenome shotgun sequencing	Sequences of rplA, rplC, rplD, rpoA, rpoB and rspJ genes in dicated the existence of micro bial rhodopsins in all phyllospheric metagenomes.	Atamna-Ismaeel et al. (2012a)
Detection of anoxygenic phototrophic bacteria	Leaves of Tamarix nilotica, Arabidopsis thaliana, Trifolium repens, Pinus silvestris,Poa pratensis	Whole metagenome shotgun sequencing	pufM, pufL and bchY genes of phototrophs were detected in all phyllospheric metagenomes except for that of Tamarix. Anoxygenic phototrophic community included methylobacteria and diverse Proteobacteria.	Atamna-Ismaeel et al. (2012b)
Identifying the major physiological traits of dominant microorganisms	Aerial parts of rice (Oryza sativa)	Whole metagenome shotgun sequencing, protein analyzation by HPLC-ESI-MS/MS	Protein families specific for phyllosphere communities involved in substrate uptake, response to reactive oxygen species, fasciclin, methanol utilization and invasion-associated locus B were detected.	Knief et al. (2012)