Exploring Intricacies of Interconnectedness with the Study of Plant Microbiomes [Research Overview]

Standing in the bright blaze of the sun, fields of green were extending from my chest in all directions. Heart skipping beat, the sound of my matched breathing joined a music of leaves revealed with the wind. Accompanying the taste and scent of sunscreen, sweat, and earth being torn and displaced by a shovel, particles of everything were shifting and traveling - in and through the air, high and deep, into the crevices and pores of the soil, roaming roots, blades of grass, the sampling equipment at my side, my skin, lungs, veins. Sensations of obliteration were overwhelming my system, all knowing momentarily lost in revelatory, dynamic motion.

While conducting field work in 108°F weather might have had something to do with it, instances like this - of feeling so caught up and dissolved in the present - have occurred throughout my life. As paralyzing as they can be, these experiences also bestow realizations that the possibilities and actualities of what is - and thus, what was and can be - are so much greater than what I routinely operate from. 

Throughout history, we have sought to better understand the great abstractions we come up against and are part of, developing tools, methodologies, and frameworks to describe and embrace the varied nature of reality. Out of that which has become our science, our explorations and observations actually point to how much lives in the spaces of the unknown, of questioning, of constant transformation; our universe and life being infinitely more strange, agape, and mysterious than fleeting glance, facts for memorization in heavy textbooks, and rigid, antiquated pillars of society may convey. 

It is out of a desire to further walk the edge of what we know, perceive, and dare to imagine and create that I am a scientist, a student, and an advocate. In light of the liberating understandings and opportunities I have been provided, I ultimately seek to better see, appreciate, celebrate, and serve others, in all of our interdependent otherness. 

What follows are several of the inquiries and efforts that make up my life.

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I am a fourth year graduate student in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology and the laboratory of Dr. Devin Coleman-Derr, and I have the great honor and privilege of studying what I believe are incredibly awe-inspiring expressions of life: plants and the microscopic organisms that are intimately associated with them.

I am endlessly curious about these photosynthetic wonders and soil-dwelling, industrious microbes. Together, their partnership significantly impacts ecosystem functioning, climate, wellbeing, and more. In soils specifically, numerous tiny life forms - from bacteria and fungi to viruses and more - impact the availability of nutrients and water, as well as influence how well plants can navigate obstacles like disease and drought. Plants, and the relationships they form with microbes, speak to how vital community can be in survival, growth, and overcoming adversity, and I am particularly drawn to better understanding what contributes to resilience and overall community creation and maintenance. 

With our efforts to describe how plant microbes form, modulate, and function within their symbiotic communities, my labmates and I seek to help improve agricultural production and promote food security amidst increasing population levels across the globe and predictions that challenges due to climate change will intensify in coming decades.

I am currently delving into how the environment and host plants may influence the below-ground communities of various crop plants, including wheat and sorghum, a lesser-known but hearty plant, used as food, animal feed, and a biofuel feedstock.

This work involves a collaboration with Dr. Jeffrey Mitchell at a field site in California’s Central Valley. Here, we are studying how farming practices impact the relationships that sorghum forms with the microbes that surround its root system. I am discovering which microbes get close to sorghum roots and how they interact when the soil is taken care of in different ways, like when cover crops are grown, compared to when tilling techniques are used. Tilling the soil in particular can impact the amount of carbon it holds or releases into the atmosphere, as well as affect the degree to which soil is vulnerable to erosion and how much water and fertilizer can reach roots under the soil surface. These characteristics more broadly influence how productive a plant is come harvest time. It is very rewarding to learn more about how plants and humans can together influence communities of diverse microbes, and then relate this back to areas of improving crop yield and soil health. 

I am also putting a lens on how heat and drought stress affect sorghum’s root microbiome. Our lab has shown that certain bacteria rally around sorghum in great numbers when the plant is stressed by drought, and we suspect that sorghum calls upon the same groups of microbes to help with growing in the heat. In specialized chambers where I can control the temperature, humidity, and light, an undergraduate, Sarah Bui, and I are searching for patterns in what microbes sorghum recruits when experiencing stress from its environment.

As for the plant itself, I use several varieties of wheat to explore how the process of humans selecting for different traits - such as bigger seeds and faster growing times - impact who those plants can interact with on the microbial level. Plants have evolved so many incredible ways to work within and against different conditions and constraints, and with this project, it's so exciting to delve deeper into how plants communicate with those in their surroundings and look at how that may of changed across generations.

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From community interrelatedness to insights and breakthroughs, connections are stunningly powerful.

Throughout the journey of surveying these relationship between plants and microbes, I have benefited tremendously from the communities that I am part of. In the supportive and inspiring environment of my lab, department, campus, and beyond, I am deeply grateful for all the opportunities and support given to me to venture evermore deeper into the questions that call.

With all that I am learning, I aspire to give back. In addition to mentoring, I am involved in several outreach efforts, including the Graduate Assembly, the CLEAR Project (Communication, Literacy & Education for Agricultural Research), Berkeley’s oSTEM chapter (out in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), and Bay Area Scientists in Schools.

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An edited version can be found at: https://grad.berkeley.edu/news/headlines/plant-microbiomes/