Study of wheat-associated endophytic microbiome
This project studied the wheat (Triticum aestivum ssp. aestivum) endophytic microbiome and dealt with the issue of host DNA co-amplification. Since this can significantly hamper the accurate characterization of microbial communities, peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) and blocking primers have been developed to specifically block the amplification of wheat DNA. Blocking systems have been developed to target different regions of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene and the fungal ITS1 and ITS2 regions.