Descripción del proyecto
Biopelículas saludables para una agricultura sostenible
Promover y aplicar métodos agrícolas más sostenibles es fundamental para garantizar la salud del medio ambiente sano, la rentabilidad económica y la equidad socioeconómica. Ello implica el estudio de planteamientos innovadores. En el proyecto BacBio, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, se pretende investigar el potencial de microbios beneficiosos (biopelículas) como alternativa parcial de los plaguicidas, al tiempo que se mitiga el riesgo de contaminación por microorganismos patógenos humanos. El equipo de BacBio empleará diversas estrategias para estudiar la viabilidad del uso de microbios beneficiosos para la protección de plantas. Se centrará en dos organismos estrechamente relacionados pero con funciones opuestas: «Bacillus subtilis», que protege las plantas, y «Bacillus cereus», un microorganismo patógeno para el ser humano. El objetivo de BacBio es mejorar la comprensión de las interacciones entre bacterias y plantas mediante el análisis de las diferencias químicas de sus matrices extracelulares.
Objetivo
Sustainable agriculture is an ambitious concept conceived to improve productivity but minimizing side effects. Why the efficiency of a biocontrol agent is so variable? How can different therapies be efficiently exploited in a combined way to combat microbial diseases? These are questions that need investigation to convey with criteria of sustainability. What I present is an integral proposal aim to study the microbial ecology and specifically bacterial biofilms as a central axis of two differential but likely interconnected scenarios in plant health: i) the beneficial interaction of the biocontrol agent (BCA) Bacillus subtilis, and ii) the non-conventional interaction of the food-borne pathogen Bacillus cereus.
I will start working with B. subtilis, and reasons are: 1) Different isolates are promising BCAs and are commercialized for such purpose, 2) There exist vast information of the genetics circuitries that govern important aspects of B. subtilis physiology as antibiotic production, cell differentiation, and biofilm formation. In parallel I propose to study the way B. cereus, a food-borne pathogenic bacterium interacts with vegetables. I am planning to set up a multidisciplinary approach that will combine genetics, biochemistry, proteomics, cell biology and molecular biology to visualize how these bacterial population interacts, communicates with plants and other microorganisms, or how all these factors trigger or inhibit the developmental program ending in biofilm formation. I am also interested on knowing if structural components of the bacterial extracellular matrix (exopolysaccharides or amyloid proteins) are important for bacterial fitness. If this were the case, I will also investigate which external factors affect their expression and assembly in functional biofilms. The insights get on these studies are committed to impulse our knowledge on microbial ecology and their biotechnological applicability to sustainable agriculture and food safety.
Ámbito científico
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitución de acogida
29016 Malaga
España