Descrizione del progetto
Come seminare comunità microbiche per sviluppare probiotici funzionali
Il microbiota è importante per la crescita vegetale. Tali minuscoli organismi, che vivono sulla superficie di organismi superiori, incidono significativamente sulla salute del proprio ospite, contribuendo alle funzioni vitali ma fungendo inoltre come serbatoio per patogeni facoltativi. Il progetto DeCoCt, finanziato dall’UE, decifrerà tale processo complesso, che è essenziale per guarire dal microbiota dannoso. Attingendo a esperienze pregresse nello studio di comunità microbiche tramite esperimenti in laboratorio e l’analisi di fattori che definiscono il microbiota della pianta arabetta comune in condizioni naturali, il progetto individuerà i fattori principali legati alla stabilità e le cause inerenti alle dinamiche condivise volti a ricostruire comunità di sintesi. I risultati chiariranno le modalità con cui seminare comunità microbiche che si trasformino in probiotici funzionali, una sfida cruciale.
Obiettivo
"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."
Campo scientifico
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantIstituzione ospitante
72074 Tuebingen
Germania