Microbiology
Plants do not exist as sterile organisms but are populated by microorganisms both below (rhizosphere) and above the ground (phyllosphere). We are interested in a systems-level understanding of the phyllosphere with the aim to identify organizing principles of bacterial community members. We developed a cultivation-independent metaproteogenomic approach and applied it to phyllosphere communities of different host plants in planta in order to get an unbiased view on the overall bacterial community composition and in particular to identify abundant proteins as a proxy for important protein function of community members in the habitat.
Such analyses are paralleled by work using synthetic microbial communities colonizing Arabidopsis thaliana. We are testing indigenous commensal bacteria and their interaction with the foliar plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 on the model plant and investigate underlying mechanisms of plant protection.
► Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.ch/citations?hl=de&user=B2U54GAAAAAJ
Prof. Dr. Julia Vorholt
ETH Zurich
Institute of Microbiology
8093 Zurich
Tel: +41 (0)44 632 55 24