Symbiont capture in the phyllosphere: Recognition mechanisms, roles and repurposing of vertically transmitted leaf symbionts – PHYLLOSYM

Plant microbiome engineering holds great promise for the management of plant health, but how stable associations between plants and beneficial symbionts arise remains poorly understood. A uniquely tractable hereditary symbiosis between a semi-domesticated African yam species and a novel species of bacteria offers a unique opportunity to uncover mechanisms of recruitment and transgenerational transmission of beneficial symbionts of plants. The unprecedented experimental tractability of this leaf nodule symbiosis furthermore opens up new avenues towards the engineering of hereditary traits via symbiont manipulation.
Taking advantage of this model leaf nodule symbiosis, I will apply comparative genomics, metabolomics, molecular and synthetic biology methods to address the following questions:

[1] What are metabolic exchanges occur between host and mutualistic bacteria at the leaf surface?
[2] What features of the symbionts are recognized in the phyllosphere? At what developmental stage does symbiont recognition occur?

Understanding leaf nodule symbiosis has the potential to reveal the basic ground-rules by which plants negotiate with their resident microbiota in above-ground organs. In addition, uncovering the metabolic basis of the symbiosis may yield novel, biologically inspired small molecules with applications for crop protection.