MikroNet: From Microbiomes to Microbial Networks

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Sylvia Schnell, since 5/2019
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems ; Soil Sciences ; Microbial Ecology and Applied Microbiology ; Ecology of Land Use ; Organismic Interactions, Chemical Ecology and Microbiomes of Plant Systems
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 390838017

No organism on earth lives alone, included the plants; they are associated with a huge and complex microbiome, which contributes to shape their phenotype and to maintain their fitness. Such microbes do not only interact with the host, but also with each other, and these microbe-microbe interactions strongly affect the microbiome output in terms of ecological services provided the microbiome to both the plant and the ecosystem. The aim of this project is to study the microbial interactions across kingdoms (Bacteria-Archaea-Fungi) in the rhizosphere of four domesticated crops and five wild counterparts. A few cases of fungal-bacterial interactions were already studied in laboratory, and it was shown that they positively affect plant fitness and are important drivers of soil diversity and function. Unfortunately, due to the limitation of cultivation, very few is known about the microbial interactions occurring within complex microbial communities in nature. In this project we will take advantage of the last bioinformatics methodologies to draw an inter-kingdom network of interaction based on the correlation of co-occurrence patterns, as resulting from high-throughput sequencing analysis. Our hypothesis is that such interactions are the product of long co-evolutionary history and, as such, agricultural crop plants (evolutionary young) are expected to harbor a greater microbial diversity in their rhizosphere but less microbial networks than their respective wild ancestors (older). We will also attempt to unravel the effect of the inter-kingdom interactions at functional level, to understand how the microbial partners influence each other and how this can affect the plant host. Cultivation-dependent, cultivation-independent and microscopy analyses will be integrated to draw reliable conclusions supported by data. The expected results will shed light onto the microbial ecology of uncultivated microbes across the boundary of kingdoms, and will also increase our knowledge of the plant microbiome.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Dr. Massimiliano Cardinale, until 4/2019