This action funds an NSF National Plant Genome Initiative Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2014. The fellowship supports a research and training plan in a host laboratory for the Fellow who also presents a plan to broaden participation in biology. The title of the research and training plan for this fellowship to Michelle Afkhami is "Multiple Mutualist Effects: Linking Functional Genomics to the Ecology of Mutualist Diversity in Plant-microbe Interactions." The host institutions for the fellowship are Michigan State University and the University of Toronto, and the sponsoring scientists are Drs. Maren Friesen, Yair Shachar-Hill and John Stinchcombe. Training objectives include expanding the Fellow's research from pairwise to multispecies mutualism and gaining training in state-of-the-art molecular and genomics technologies, such as high-throughput sequencing and data analysis. In addition to informing agriculture, conservation and restoration practices, broader impacts of this research include mentoring of undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds, development of educational modules for children, and online scientific writing for the public.
Crop breeding has focused on high plant yield under high fertilization. However, these practices damage both the environment and human health. To meet the challenge of sustainably providing nutrition for growing human populations, high-performing crop and forage plants that require minimal inputs are needed. Mutualisms -- species interactions in which all organisms benefit -- between host plants and microbes provide a key avenue for meeting this goal. Previous research has focused on pairwise mutualisms (a single host and partner), but in both natural and agro-ecosystems organisms often interact with many mutualists simultaneously. To improve agricultural outputs, research elucidating how multi-species mutualisms impact plant performance is required. This research combines ecological and cutting-edge next generation genomic techniques to study how associating with multiple partners impacts Medicago truncatula, a close relative of important food and forage plants. M. truncatula associates with two groups of microbes that benefit plants by increasing nutrient supply: mycorrhizal fungi (fungi that enhance phosphorus uptake) and rhizobia (bacteria that fix atmospheric nitrogen for plant consumption). Using factorial experiments, genome-wide association mapping, and transcriptomics, this research will investigate how combinations of microbes impact plant performance, uncover the genes underlying these effects, and determine how gene expression is impacted by multi-species mutualism.
