Descrizione del progetto
Biofilm sani per un’agricoltura sostenibile
Per garantire la salute dell’ambiente, la redditività economica e l’equità socioeconomica, è fondamentale promuovere e attuare metodi agricoli più sostenibili, il che comporta l’esplorazione di approcci innovativi. Finanziato dal Consiglio europeo della ricerca, il progetto BacBio mira a studiare il potenziale dei microbi benefici (biofilm) in qualiità di parziali sostituti dei pesticidi, mitigando al contempo il rischio di contaminazione determinato dagli agenti patogeni umani. BacBio utilizzerà diverse strategie allo scopo di studiare la fattibilità dell’uso di microbi benefici per la protezione fitosanitaria. Il progetto si concentrerà su due organismi strettamente correlati dotati di funzioni contrastanti: Il Bacillus subtilis, un batterio che protegge le piante, e il Bacillus cereus, un patogeno per gli esseri umani. Analizzando le differenze chimiche presenti nelle loro matrici extracellulari, BacBio mira a far progredire la nostra comprensione delle interazioni esistenti tra batteri e piante.
Obiettivo
Sustainable agriculture is an ambitious concept conceived to improve productivity but minimizing side effects. Why the efficiency of a biocontrol agent is so variable? How can different therapies be efficiently exploited in a combined way to combat microbial diseases? These are questions that need investigation to convey with criteria of sustainability. What I present is an integral proposal aim to study the microbial ecology and specifically bacterial biofilms as a central axis of two differential but likely interconnected scenarios in plant health: i) the beneficial interaction of the biocontrol agent (BCA) Bacillus subtilis, and ii) the non-conventional interaction of the food-borne pathogen Bacillus cereus.
I will start working with B. subtilis, and reasons are: 1) Different isolates are promising BCAs and are commercialized for such purpose, 2) There exist vast information of the genetics circuitries that govern important aspects of B. subtilis physiology as antibiotic production, cell differentiation, and biofilm formation. In parallel I propose to study the way B. cereus, a food-borne pathogenic bacterium interacts with vegetables. I am planning to set up a multidisciplinary approach that will combine genetics, biochemistry, proteomics, cell biology and molecular biology to visualize how these bacterial population interacts, communicates with plants and other microorganisms, or how all these factors trigger or inhibit the developmental program ending in biofilm formation. I am also interested on knowing if structural components of the bacterial extracellular matrix (exopolysaccharides or amyloid proteins) are important for bacterial fitness. If this were the case, I will also investigate which external factors affect their expression and assembly in functional biofilms. The insights get on these studies are committed to impulse our knowledge on microbial ecology and their biotechnological applicability to sustainable agriculture and food safety.
Campo scientifico
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-STG - Starting GrantIstituzione ospitante
29016 Malaga
Spagna