This award supports Dr. Joseph W. Kloepper and a graduate student of Auburn University to collaborate in biological research with Dr. Jim W. L. van Vuurde of the Bacteriology Department of the Research Institute for Plant Protection in Wageningen, the Netherlands. Their goal in working with the Dutch group is to acquire state of the art experience in research related to detecting and monitoring bacteria in complex ecosystems, and to apply these techniques to future research in the U.S. In particular, the objectives of their work are to learn and evaluate advanced immunological techniques to quantify and differentiate introduced wild-type plant-associated bacteria. They will evaluate selected immunological methods and compare them with model genetic marking systems for assessing overall bacterial colonization of plants. The project links two research groups with complementary expertise: the Dutch have been innovators in immunological approaches to bacterial detection and the U.S. group has particular expertise in the microbial ecology of beneficial plant-associated bacteria. The U.S. graduate student will gain research experience at a European center of excellence which will contribute to his dissertation project. In situ detection of and monitoring the population dynamics of specific bacteria in complex ecosystems has historically been an important aspect of microbial ecology with natural populations of bacteria. These processes have recently received renewed emphasis for studying introductions of genetically engineered microorganisms. The principal limiting factor in such ecological investigations has been the difficulty of differentiating the target strain from indigenous or other background microflora. Genetic markers are currently used to provide such differentiation, but marking may cause other genetic changes which alter the strain's behavior in natural environments. Immunological techniques such as those to be studied in this collaboration offer a promising alternative for marking strains without causing genetic alterations.
