Pseudomonas granadensis strain:CT364 | isolate:CT364 Genome sequencing
The productivity and resilience of agricultural systems face multiple challenges including climate change, increasing demand and the need for more sustainable sources of fertilizers. The biotechnological potential of microbe-plant interactions have been purposed in the agronomic area. Endophytes, microbes that inhabit internal tissues of plants without causing disease, are able to modulate plant development, increase plant stress tolerance and disease resistance, suppress virulence in pathogens and development of competitor plant species and carry nutrients from the soil into plants. As a result, there is a growing interest in using plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) as an alternative to reduce fertilizers, fungicides, insecticides and herbicides.The objective of this project is to engineer plant endophytic relationships without genetically manipulating the host plant but developing a bacterial synthetic biology model organism. For that purpose, the interactions between a gram negative rhizospheric bacteria (Pseudomonas sp. CT364) and the plant Arabidopsis thaliana will be studied and engineered.