Molecular Approaches

In addition to classical molecular biology we will apply genetics, transcriptomics, and proteomics in soil-based experiments in order to link genotypes to phenotypes and vice versa. We are particularly interested in sensing and signaling in the interaction of roots with soil microorganisms or water and nutrient perception in soil.

Molecular and genetic experiments are usually conducted in sterile, artificial media such as agar plates or nutrient solution, which is adequate when addressing research questions such as mutant identification or molecular gene functions. But the root group aims at understanding root growth and development under conditions closer to the natural environments of the target plants.

The importance of growth media was shown recently by root hair formation of several rice genotypes- when grown in nutrient solution all genotypes increased root hair density and length when facing phosphorus deficiency, but the same genotypes failed to exhibit an increase in these traits when grown in soil (Figure X, Nestler et al., 2016). It could also be shown that some genes identified in artificial conditions to be root hair and P deficiency related did not show induced expression in soil-grown roots (Nestler and Wissuwa, 2016).

Thus we aim to adapt existing molecular techniques and use image-guided sampling to link soil-based molecular information with the macroscopic observations obtained through the various IBG-2 platforms, thus linking genotype to phenotype in conditions closer to natural environments.

Nestler et al., 2016
Nestler and Wissuwa, 2016