Biodiversity and ecology of soil microbes
Soil microbial communities are extremely diverse, with potentially thousands of microbial “species” inhabiting a single gram of soil. Many microorganisms interact with plants and can improve nutrients uptake, reduce pathogens damage or protect against toxic molecules. My research program aim at understanding how plants can stimulate microbial activity and select beneficial microbes, and conversely how these microbes benefit plants. We use a variety of high-throughput sequencing approaches to target entire microbial communities from plant-associated environments, using metagenomics to identify the microorganisms and functional genes that are present, and metatranscriptomics to identify the genes that are actively expressed.
Keywords: Biodiversity and ecology of soil microbes • Mycorrhizal symbiosis • Soil metagenomics and metatranscriptomics • Sustainable agriculture • Biocontrol • Biofertilization • Bioremediation
See list of publications on Google Scholar.