Optimized rhizosphere microbial communities for enhanced plant productivity and stress resilience

CBGP PhD Position - La Caixa INPhINIT Incoming Programme

”La Caixa” Banking Foundation, which firmly believes that scientific progress, research, mobility and professional qualification are key to the development of society, is launching the doctoral fellowship program INPhINIT Incoming".

La Caixa INPhINIT Incoming Fellowships are dedicated and offered to early-stage researchers of any nationality to pursue their PhD studies in research centers accredited with the Spanish Seal of Excellence Severo Ochoa, María de Maeztu or Health Institute Carlos III and Portuguese units participating in the program.

Fellowship highlights

THE DEADLINE FOR THE APPLICATION IS 25 JANUARY 2022 AT 2:00 P.M. (MAINLAND SPAIN TIME).

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AREA OF KNOWLEDGE: Life Sciences Panel

GROUP OF DISCIPLINE: Plant, Animal and Environmental Biology, Physiology, Ecology and Conservation

GROUP LEADER: Prof. Stephan Pollmann, [email protected]

RESEARCH PRODUCT / RESEARCH GROUP: Official website of the group

https://pollmannlab.com

POSITION DESCRIPTION: Research Project / Research Group Description

In the current global climate change scenario, accelerated desertification and soil degradation must be taken for granted. This will consequently provoke detrimental effects on agricultural productivity. To achieve maximum crop performance to ensure food security in the future, the required innovations must go beyond the focus on the plant side only, but rather pursue a holistic approach that includes the entire ecosystem. Over millions of years, plants have evolved in close vicinity with other organisms, particularly with soil microbes that shaped their evolution and contemporary ecology. Many different microbes have a beneficial impact on plant fitness and stress resilience. An imbalance in plant–soil microbe interactions, caused by prevailing climate changes, is likely to produce considerable ramifications for ecosystem composition and function and, in turn, for plant performance. Therefore, given their importance in defining ecosystem properties, understanding how soil microbe–microbe and soil microbe–plant interactions respond to challenges imposed by climate change has become a research priority over the past couple of years. These studies aim to shed light on important ecosystem functions such as soil carbon storage and net primary productivity. In order to mitigate the risks caused by climate variability, in this project innovations in soil microbiome engineering that counteract these changes will be investigated. Here, the focus will be on deciphering the biological processes stimulated by beneficial root endophytes. At the same time, we will investigate possibilities for harnessing the power of root endophytes from extreme environments. The intertwined approaches have the aim to render host plants more resilient to stress and, consequently, to perform better under unfavorable environmental conditions, on the molecular level.   

Job position description

The predoctoral researcher will use molecular biological and computational tools to decipher molecular response modules crucial for the establishment and maintenance of the symbiosis between plants and their root endophytes. Among other experiments, a deep analysis of mRNA sequencing data will guide the way toward the identification of gene regulatory networks controlling the symbiosis. The identified key components will be further analyzed employing a thorough reverse genetics approach and cutting-edge genome editing tools. The work will be embedded in the larger research activity of the host laboratory of Prof. Stephan Pollmann. Prof. Pollmann is Principal Investigator at the CBGP in Madrid, with extensive experience in plant–microbe interactions and plant hormonal and transcriptional network analysis. The candidate will receive hands-on interdisciplinary training on state-of-the-art “omics” technologies, e.g. metabolomics, transcriptomics, as well as machine learning and multidimensional integrative bioinformatics. Additionally, the candidate will gain advanced training in experimental design and analysis, manuscript and project preparation, and other scientific skills. Apart from this, the predoctoral researcher will benefit from the formation of additional soft skills, including knowledge transfer and the protection of intellectual property rights. The formation of junior scientists in the Pollmann lab is not only restricted to the transfer of technical knowledge but rather to promote and foster critical, interdisciplinary, and creative out-of-the-box thinking based on a solid theoretical background. In this sense, efficient communication and mutual knowledge transfer among group members is a major policy of our laboratory. For this reason, laboratory meetings are held on a regular basis, to stimulate critical scientific discussions among group members about their different projects, including the assessment of available published data in the field.

PLANT HORMONAL REGULATORY NETWORKS

https://www.cbgp.upm.es/index.php/es/?option=com_content&view=article&id=162

About CBGP (UPM-INIA)

The Centro de Biotecnología y Genómica de Plantas (CBGP, UPM-INIA/CSIC) is a joint research centre of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) and the Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA), recently integrated as National Centre in the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). Since 2017 CBGP is a Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence and has been recently awarded a new SO accreditation for the period 2022-2025. The strategic objectives of CBGP are the generation of fundamental knowledge on the genetic and molecular bases of key biological and physiological processes in plants and plant-interacting organisms, and on genomics of plants and plant-interacting organisms. The Centre also aims to develop new Computational Biology technologies for the functional analysis of plants/microorganisms. CBGP has attracted many talented scientists since its foundation, including tenure-track positions, ERC Starting Grants, as well as CM Atracción de Talento, Beatriz Galindo and Ramon y Cajal researchers.