Descripción del proyecto
Cómo sembrar comunidades microbianas para desarrollar probióticos funcionales
La microbiota es importante para el crecimiento vegetal. Estos diminutos organismos, que viven en la superficie de organismos superiores, tienen una repercusión fundamental en la salud de su hospedador: contribuyen a funciones vitales, pero también actúan como reservorios de patógenos facultativos. El proyecto DeCoCt, financiado con fondos europeos, descifrará este complejo proceso, el cual es vital para tratar la microbiota perjudicial. Basándose en la experiencia anterior de estudio de las comunidades microbianas mediante experimentos de laboratorios y de análisis de los factores que conforman la microbiota de los vegetales «Arabidopsis thaliana» en condiciones naturales, el proyecto identificará los factores de estabilidad clave y los impulsores de la dinámica comunitaria para reconstituir comunidades sintéticas. Los hallazgos arrojarán luz sobre cómo sembrar las comunidades microbianas que se desarrollan en probióticos funcionales, lo cual representa un desafío fundamental.
Objetivo
"Complex microbial communities (""microbiota"") that populate surfaces of higher organisms critically impact health of their hosts: They contribute to vital functions such as host fitness, nutrient acquisition, stress tolerance and pathogen resistance but are, at the same time, reservoirs for facultative pathogens or can promote pathogenesis. How and why communities shift from a beneficial to a detrimental state is largely unknown and we are far from utilizing identified mechanisms.
In order to cure detrimental microbiota, that were damaged or reverted through stress factors including previous diseases, decoding the complex processes governing microbiota dynamics is a key challenge. To develop durable probiotics, communal stability or the ability of a community to return to a steady state following perturbation is a key factor.
Our lab has broad expertise in studying microbial communities through lab experiments and analyzing factors that shape the microbiota of Arabidopsis thaliana plants under natural conditions and common garden experiments. We have discovered a hierarchical order in microbial community networks with hub microbes as key elements. A recent breakthrough was the discovery of microbial taxa that persist throughout the life of A. thaliana plants and their importance in network stability.
In this project we will use our expertise to identify key stability factors and drivers of communal dynamics to reconstitute synthetic communities. How to seed microbial communities that develop into functional probiotics is a key challenge. We will use knowledge based assembly of complex communities to seeds protective microbiota. We will challenge those through pathogens and abiotic factors to refine and test the predictive power of our analyses. Therefore, DeCoCt represents a highly innovative approach that holds the potential to gain novel insights beyond the current scope of microbiota and probiotics research."
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantInstitución de acogida
72074 Tuebingen
Alemania