University Research Fellowship

About the project

Plants are crucial for sustaining all life on Earth, providing food and energy, increasing biodiversity, and regulating our climate. Central to plant health is their interaction with soil microorganisms, driven through the exchange of nutrients. Plant-microbe interactions are complex and can be beneficial or damaging to the plant. Improving plant health, through augmenting their resistance to pathogen attack or increasing nutrient uptake from soils, requires a mechanistic understanding of plant-microbe interactions. Specifically, this involves understanding how and why beneficial microbes are attracted to, and subsequently grow in, the plant ‘microbiome’.

Our research focuses on the microbial recycling of organic matter in marine and terrestrial systems. So far, this work has revealed specific bacteria are responsible for the regeneration of essential inorganic nutrients for primary producers, i.e., microalgae and plants. Specifically, we have identified a new major enzyme in the global phosphorus cycle and shown two bacterial groups play an integral role in rhizosphere organophosphorus cycling. Our data further suggests these bacteria, which are also key agents for suppressing plant disease, succeed in the plant microbiome through specialising in the acquisition of distinct metabolites produced by plants and their associated fungal symbionts. 

Through combining molecular and cellular biology, including state-of-the-art light microscopy techniques, we will determine the mechanistic basis underpinning bacterial recruitment in the rhizosphere. We hypothesise divergent carbon and phosphorus acquisition strategies drive the coexistence of beneficial bacterial groups in the plant microbiome. This fundamental research has applied implications for improving the efficiency of plant phosphorus uptake and suppressing plant disease.