Plant-microbe interactions: data integration

The soil is a reservoir of microorganisms, which play key roles in ecosystems and can improve plant growth and health. Moreover, plants exert selective forces on the soil microbial communities through root exudation, which is an input of organic carbon into the soil, where it is directly available for microbial growth. However, the root exudate is also composed of specific compounds, which play an important role as signaling molecules in root-microbe interaction. We know that the composition of root exudates varies with the environmental conditions, the plant developmental stage, plant species and cultivars, and as a result so does the plant microbiome. Meantime, the molecular mechanisms involved in the microbiome selection by the plant are still poorly understood.

The aim of our research is to better understand how plants can select a beneficial microbiome under abiotic/biotic stress and find new lever to improve plant stress tolerance by identifying candidate genes, metabolites and microorganisms. To do so, we are using and developing new data analysis and computational tools in order to analyse and integrate phenotypic and omics data, such as genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics and metagenomics.