Institute of Microbiology
PhD position
Molecular basis of leaf microbiota interactions
The mission of the Institute of Microbiology at the ETH Zürich is to advance innovative research and teaching in
microbiology and immunology. Microbial interactions are the unifying scheme and currently cover microbial
communities and microbe interactions with eukaryotic hosts. The collaborative environment of the Institute of
Microbiology has created a unique scientific fertilization ground unsurpassed in breadth, top-level expertise and
visibility in the field of Microbiology and Immunology.
Group:
Group of Prof. Dr. Julia Vorholt
Contact:
ETH Zürich
Institute of Microbiology
Prof. Dr. Julia Vorholt
HCI F 429
Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 4
8093 Zürich
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +41 (0) 44 632 55 24
http://www.micro.biol.ethz.ch/
Description:
Understanding processes in microbial communities is a crucial task given the impact of microbial
communities on environmental systems, including plants and animals. One habitat that has been
gaining growing interest is the phyllosphere, or the aerial parts of plants, which carry out the
majority of terrestrial carbon dioxide fixation. As a key resource to move plant microbiota research
forward we recently established a bacterial strain collection from Arabidiopsis leaves covering
the majority (more than 60%) of reproducible microbial diversity identified by cultivationindependent analyses and established gnotobiotic plant systems for microbiota reconstitution
experiments. The high recovery is remarkable because it is estimated that 85–99% of bacteria
and archaea cannot yet be grown in the laboratory. The comprehensive leaf strain collection
together the genome sequences of a core collection (230 isolates) opens new perspectives in
establishing causal relationships between microbiota community structure and function.
Within this project we aim at uncovering the molecular basis of microbial interactions with an
emphasis on antagonism and potentially cooperation. Pair-wise interaction analyses on solidified
artificial phyllosphere-mimic medium will be conducted in a high throughput manner using the
bacterial leaf collection. Secondary metabolites from identified negative and positive interactions
will be identified by high resolution mass spectrometry and correlated with the interaction
phenotypes and will be paralleled by genome investigations using in silico approaches. We will
thus explore the phyllosphere as a source of novel secondary metabolites, i.e. antibiotics, for the
first time and provide a molecular and genetic bases of microbial interactions that shape bacterial
coexistence pattern in situ which are unexplained so far.
Reference:
Vorholt (2012) Nat Rev Microbiol. 2012 Dec;10(12):828-40
Comments:
The project is funded by an European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant. It will be
conducted in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Jörn Piel (Institute of Microbiology, ETHZ).
Time frame:
As per agreement