WE ARE OPEN FOR SCIENCE!
m-CAFEs is following state shelter in place orders for on-site staffing levels
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Our project aims to understand and control the microscopic organisms that live on plant roots to support sustainable bioenergy.
The m-CAFEs SFA (Microbial Community Analysis & Functional Evaluation in Soils Scientific Focus Area) is a multi-institutional project that will develop sufficient mechanistic and spatio-temporal understanding of plant and microbial interactions within grass rhizosphere communities to enable accurate prediction of community responses to important perturbations.
We use ‘bottom-up’ defined microbial assemblies that enable detailed characterization of both constituent isolates and synthetic communities. This approach is complemented by the development of novel, “top-down” in situ technologies to investigate diverse communities that include uncultivated microbes. These studies will inform the development of predictive models that are iteratively refined through integrated simulations and experimentation.
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The understanding gained and approaches pioneered will help advance microbiome research towards a more predictive and causative science, and lay a critical foundation for harnessing beneficial microbiomes to support sustainable bioenergy and improving our understanding of nutrient cycling in the rhizosphere.