Priority Programme for Deconstruction and Reconstruction of the Plant Microbiota

Together with colleagues from 25 different institutions across Germany and Switzerland, we have recently submitted a successful application to establish a DFG-funded Priority Programme whose aim is the generation of fundamental insights into the molecular mechanisms that govern plant microbiota establishment and function. We aim to apply pioneering reductionist approaches, involving establishment of plant microbe culture collections and reconstitution experiments to test the impact of different microbial communities in nature and the role of plant immunity in influencing the microbiota. Computational and genomic tools will be applied to plant microbiota data to guide hypothesis testing and the design of microbiota reconstitution experiments. DECRyPT is coordinated by Prof. Alga Zuccaro at the University of Cologne. More information on the programme can be found here and here.