June 30th 2022 / LEAVE A COMMENT
We have a new fully funded, two year postdoctoral research position available immediately in our lab to work on genome-resolved metagenomics of crop microbiomes. The position description can be found here, and is suitable for candidates with prior expertise in plant microbiome research, bioinformatics and/or shotgun metagenomics analysis. Please email colemanderr@berkeley.edu if interested.
A two-year postdoctoral research position (see Advertisment) is available starting immediately in the Plant Gene Expression Center under the supervision of Dr. Devin Coleman-Derr and Dr. Frank Harmon at the United States Department of Agriculture. The lab is affiliated with the Plant and Microbial Biology Department at the University of California at Berkeley, and is located in the city of Albany, California within the San Francisco Bay Area. The postdoctoral fellow will help develop a new research program in the area of microbiome research in wine grapes, specifically focused on the new challenge of smoke taint.
Congratulations Edi Wipf on the new paper out in Phytobiomes as a First Look. The manuscript covers our own effort to explore the different effects of heat and drought stress on the sorghum root microbiome in a controlled growth-chamber based experiment with sorghum seedlings. Edi demonstrates that heat stress provokes a strong increase in Actinobacterial taxa that is similar to, but independent from, that induced by water stress.
Check out our new publication on how drought impacts the millet root microbiome by former graduate student Tuesday Simmons, who has recently left to take a postition at the Bay Area science start-up, General Automation Lab Technology (GALT). The paper explores where shifts in microbiome composition are driven by local or global effects, among other things, and compiles results from several other studies for a broad comparison of drought enriched taxa from different environments and hosts.
We have a new fully funded, two year postdoctoral research position available immediately in our lab to advance methodology in the area of genome-resolved metagenomics of crop microbiomes. The position is suitable for candidates with prior expertise in bioinformatics and/or shotgun metagenomics analysis. Please email colemanderr@berkeley.edu if interested.
A new article from our lab highlights recent advances in the field of plant microbiome research pertaining to the root microbiome’s response to drought stress. It outlines several hypotheses regarding molecular mechanisms responsible for the observed enrichment of Gram positive bacteria within roots following a plant’s exposure to drought stress, and suggests putative methods for testing the consequence of this enrichment for crop fitness.
Check out the new Book Chapter “Role of the Plant Root Microbiome in Abiotic Stress Tolerance” from Daniel Caddell and Siwen Deng on the impact of root borne microbes on abiotic stress tolerance in plants. The work highlights recent efforts to understand bacterial and fungal contributions to plant fitness under drought, salinity and nutrient stress, and to develop microbial products that can be used in agriculture for boosting yields under challenging environmental conditions.
We are very excited to participate in the inaugural year for the NIFA AFRI Plant Microbiomes program area. This three year funding award will support our ongoing work to characterize the causes and consequences of Actinobacterial enrichment in the root microbiome under drought stress. The project represents our first collaboration with the Deutschbauer lab at UCB, bringing bonafide microbial genomic expertise to our efforts. Welcome Adam! Additionally, this projects reinvests in a long standing collaboration with Jeff Dahlberg at the UC Kearney Agricultural Research Center that will allow us to explore microbial dynamics in agriculturally relevant contexts.
Congratulations to Tuesday Simmons, Siwen Deng and Daniel Caddell for their recent publication outlining our protocol for 16S rRNA profiling of plant associated microbial communities from the root endosphere and rhizosphere. The paper includes a video outlining our methodology for field sampling, sample preparation and amplicon library preparation.
Congratulations to Ling Xu for publication of her recent research article on the effect of drought on the development of the root-associated bacterial communities of Sorghum bicolor, published this week in Frontiers in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences. This work is the first published from our recent DOE funded EPICON Project, exploring the molecular mechanisms of sorghum’s remarkable drought tolerance. This research demonstrates the role of drought in promoting enrichment of gram positive bacteria within the root microbiome, and suggests a potential plant metabolite-mediated mechanism for this restructuring.
Coleman-Derr Lab 