Picture «Maize root microbiome» was awarded in SNSF Scientific Image Competition

27.04.2023
The picture submitted by Lisa Thönen shows extracts from maize roots on an agar plate containing plant specialized metabolites produced by maize, benzoxazinoids. The bacteria which can metabolise the compounds appear red. The jury commented: “The intriguing photograph acts as a poetic window into a new world awaiting discovery: the microbe communities living under our feet. We might not exactly know what we are looking at, but we still feel attracted to its material presence and enigmatic beauty. While the picture reminds us of both the micro- and macrocosmos, the container puts them on a human scale”. Each year the Swiss National Science Foundation awards images that researchers submit form their work. All pictures can be viewed here and covered by an article in SRF and NZZ. Pictures will be presented in the exhibition “Beauties of science” at the Biel Festival of Photography 2023 (5 – 28 May 2023).

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Welcome Hilal

14.04.2023
Hilal Civelek obtained her MSc degree from the Gebze Technical University in Turkey. Given her outstanding performance, Hilal has been awarded a PhD scholarship by the Turkish Ministry of Education. With her expertise in genetics, she will be working on the topic of the SNF project ‘Plant Responsiveness to Microbiota Feedbacks’.

Group retreat

13.03.2023
Earlier in March, our recently grown group made their way to Engelberg for our first ever retreat. During our 3-day stay in the Zschokke-House on Gerschnialp, extensive science sessions were held, where we learnt more about what each group member is working on. Besides having exciting discussions and transfering knowledge, time was spent curling, skiing, snow tubing and hiking. Everyone is hoping for a next retreat to happen! mehr

Merci Jürg!

Thank you, Dr. Oetiker, for all your contributions to botany and teaching at the Basel University. What a memorable fare well party. We had lots of fun with your miracle fruits.
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Welcome Mikiko

01.02.2023
Mikiko Karasawa obtained a European Master degree in ‘Plant Health in Sustainable Cropping Systems’ after research stays in Valencia and Utrecht. In her PhD, she will investigate the underlying mechanisms of host specificity of plant microbiomes, specifically looking into the metabolic specialization of root microbiomes. Mikiko will work in the ERC project ‘Decoding microbiota feedbacks on plants – mifeePs’.

Welcome Anlun

01.02.2023
Anlun Wei graduated with a Master’s degree at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He will develop in his PhD methodology for the generation of bacterial mutant libraries. He will then apply this resource to uncover the genetics of maize root bacteria and their traits to cope with the secondary metabolites of their host plant. Anlun will work in the ERC project ‘Decoding microbiota feedbacks on plants – mifeePs’.

Welcome Ellen

01.02.2023
Ellen recently completed her apprenticeship as laboratory technician. She has a background in agrobiology with special trainings in molecular biology and phytopathology. Ellen joins the team to become our robotics specialist for next generation sequencing applications and thereby, she holds a key position in the plant microbe interaction group

Welcome Christine

01.02.2023
Christine obtained her PhD from the ETH Zurich where she continued as postdoc and senior assistant in the group of Prof. Julia Vorholt. She did seminal contributions to the field of phyllosphere biology, e.g. mapping metabolic interactions within the phyllosphere microbiome or demonstrating direct plant protection by the phyllosphere bacteria. Christine is a microbiologist with profound expertise in microbial genetics and bioinformatics. Christine will head the team working on the ERC project ‘Decoding microbiota feedbacks on plants -mifeePs’

Congratulations!

15.12.2022
Veronica Caggìa, Lisa Thoenen and Valentin Gfeller have successfully defended their PhDs. #PhDsisters #PhDbrother #dreamteam

Highly Cited Researcher 2022

Klaus Schlaeppi: “Honored to be named a #HighlyCited2022 researcher by @ClarivateAG. Many thanks and credits to my great team @unibas_en, collaborators and colleagues!” mehr

Group outing Wasserfallen

On the 23th of August, our group exchanged their desks and lab benches for the great outdoors. We took the cable car from Reigoldswil up to Wasserfallen. Up there we did a hike with a lovely view of the Alps, followed by lunch and a short break before heading down again. At the end, the brave ones did a downhill “scooter” ride back to Reigoldswil. We also had the chance to get to know each other and the new team members better. We’re already looking forward to our next group adventure, and hopefully many new faces joining us!
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Congratulations Lisa

19.08.2022
The ISME is the biggest conference in microbial ecology. This year it took place in Lausanne. Out of 1700 presented posters, the poster presented by Lisa Thönen won a student poster award. It shows that maize root bacteria metabolize host secondary metabolites. As a product, they form a red coloured degradation product. In her PhD, Lisa investigates where, how and why bacteria evolved this trait.

Congratulations Vero

11.8.2022
Our PhD student Veronica Caggìa (no 6) won the World Championship of Indiaca with the Swiss women's team in Luxemburg.

Welcome Pascale

1.08.2022
Pascale Flury joins the plant microbe interaction group as research associate. During her PhD and postdoc she worked on the genomics and the ecology of interactions of plant-beneficial Pseudomonas bacteria with pest insects with Profs. Monika Maurhofer (ETH Zurich) and Christoph Keel (University of Lausanne). She enriches the group with expertise related to #plant pathology, #biological control, #molecular diagnostics, #soil-borne plant diseases and #microbiology of compost.

mifeePs - decoding microbiota feedbacks on plants

7.07.2022
How to decode this wonderful letter head?

Horizon Europe (HORIZON) Call: ERC-2021-COG
= This is communication relates to the Horizon Europe call for Consolidator Grants of the European Research Council from the year 2021

Project: 101044525 — mifeePs
= This is communication refers to the project mifeePs (which has the given project number)
PS: mifeePs stands for decoding microbiota feedbacks on plants and present the project submitted by Klaus Schlaeppi to the ERC COG call in 2021

GAP invitation letter (from reserve list)
= GAP stands for grant preparation; An ‘invitation for grant preparation’ simply means that the project was selected for funding; a COG project is worth 2M € - Rock n’roll!
= reserve list means that the project mifeePs - although favorably evaluated - it’s ranking was initially not high enough given the budget limit of the call. It now has moved from the reserve to the main list because higher ranked proposals dropped out or additional funding became available. Rock n’roll!

Highly Cited Researcher 2021

1.12.2021
Each year, Clarivate™ identifies the world’s most influential researchers ─ they select few who have been most frequently cited by their peers over the last decade. In 2021, fewer than 6,700, or about 0.1%, of the world's researchers, in 21 research fields and across multiple fields, have earned this exclusive distinction.

Klaus Schläppi is among this elite group recognized for his exceptional research influence, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in the Web of Science™.
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Block Course 'Plant Biology' 2021

4.10.2021
The motivated and interested undergraduate students perform exciting experiments and learn about the fascinating field of 'Molecular Plant Microbe Interactions’. For the first time this part of the block course takes place at the new Biocentrum.
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Group outing Gorges de l’Areuse

On August 17th, our group exchanged their desks and their labwork for the great outdoors. We spent a GORGEous day following the wild river Areuse through all its twists and turns, eating delicious trout in the sunshine and getting to know each other better. We’re already looking forward to our next group adventure, and hopefully many new faces joining us!
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Welcome Charlotte

1.8.2021
Charlotte Joller studied Biology at the University of Fribourg and graduated in plant and microbial sciences. She will decipher plant exudate and root microbiota dynamics during pathogen attack in a Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center – Syngenta Research Fellowship project in collaboration with Prof. Joëlle Schläpfer, University of Zürich.

Welcome Katja

1.06.2021
Katja Stengele obtained her MSc degree from the University of Bern. She will investigate the underlying mechanisms of Arabidopsis growth feedbacks to soil microbes in her PhD.

Specific and conserved patterns of microbiota-structuring by maize benzoxazinoids in the field

11.05.2021
In the work led by Selma Cadot we show that Benzoxazinoids, a class of defensive root exudate compounds, function in selectively structuring the assembly of root and rhizosphere microbiotas across different field conditions. Have a look at the video abstract. mehr

Microbiome diagnostics for sustainable agriculture

26.04.2021
We are grateful to the Gebert Rüf Foundation for project support to work on improving field inoculation with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Special thanks got to Julia Hess (Agroscope) and Dr. Natacha Bodenhausen (FiBL) driving this project with many, many helpers. Have a look at our final impact clip. mehr

Plant chemistry and food web health

8.4.2021
Did you ever think about phytochemicals being systemically relevant? In this article, we took perspective of a food web and we highlight the role of bioactive phytochemicals in linking soils, plants, animals and humans and discuss their contributions to systems health.

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New Plant Room

6.4.2021
In our plant room at Bernoullianum we started to use the new lightchambers. We have 3 Percivals with humidity / light and temperature control and 2 Percivals with only light and temperature control. All together we have a total area of over 10m2 to grow plants under specific conditions.

Welcome Lea

1.04.2021
New postdoc in the plant microbe interaction group! Lea Stauber has recently completed her PhD working on lifestyle evolution of Cryphonectria fungi in the group of Prof. Daniel Croll at the University of Neuchatel. Lea will work on establishing RNAseq in the group and investigating Arabidopsis’ responses to microbiota feedbacks.

Introducing our Pheno Box

24.03.2021
The PhenoBox allows the automated quantification of 3D plant growth phenotypes in a non-invasive way. It automatically captures images of a plant from different angles and measures with an underlying image analysis algorithm over 200 phenotypic features (more details here). The PhenoBox was constructed following the publicly available construction plans and source code initially developed by Czedik‐Eysenberg et al. (2018, New Phytologist).

Thanks, Jan Wälchli! Special credits got to Daniel Lüscher and Lukas Zimmermann from our Department for their great support constructing the Phenobox!
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Welcome Henry

1.03.2021
Henry Janse van Rensburg joins the plant microbe interaction group as postdoc. He has recently finished his PhD on the interplay of metabolism and sugar signaling during biotic stress in the group of Prof. Wim Van den Ende at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Henry will work on the SNF project ‘Plant Responsiveness to Microbiota Feedbacks’.

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