The overall aim of the project is to decode microbial interactions in the complex soil matrix, in relation to soil biogeochemical status, water stress as well as pathogen attack, and establish the impact of these interactions on plant performance.

INTERACT focus on the essential and mutually beneficial interactions between plants and microbes below ground. This project goes beyond a mere inventory of wheat plant microbiome community members, and provides much needed insight into rhizosphere ecology and microbial communication, with a goal of establishing diagnostic chemical/biological signatures for agro-system stability. With this knowledge, we can rationally and strategically manipulate plant-associated microbial communities to support high plant productivity across challenging climatic and stress scenarios. These critical advances in our understanding of rhizosphere community structure and the chemical landscape that influences its formation and function will be achieved by using genomics, transcriptomics, metaproteomics, metabolomics, in-field and greenhouse plant phenotyping, and network analysis/model construction for evaluating rhizosphere interactions for wheat.

• Negre Rodríguez M, Pioppi A, Kovács ÁT (2025) The role of plant host genetics in shaping the composition and functionality of rhizosphere microbiomes. mSystems 10(8): e00041-24 (https://doi.org/10.1128/msystems.00041-24)
• Xu X, Dinesen C, Pioppi A, Kovács ÁT*, Lozano-Andrade CN* (2025) Composing a microbial symphony: synthetic communities for promoting plant growth. Trends in Microbiology 33(7):738-751 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2025.01.006)
• Lozano-Andrade CN, Dinesen C, Wibowo M, Arenos Bach N, Hesselberg-Thomsen V, Jarmusch SA, Strube ML, Kovács ÁT (2025) Surfactin facilitates establishment of Bacillus subtilis in synthetic communities. ISME Journal 19(1):wraf013 (https://doi.org/10.1093/ismejo/wraf013)
• Dinesen C, Vertot M, Jarmusch SA, Lozano-Andrade CN, Andersen AJC, Kovács ÁT (2025) Subtilosin A production is influenced by surfactin levels in Bacillus subtilis. microLIFE 6:uqae029 (https://doi.org/10.1093/femsml/uqae029)
• Song L, Nielsen LJD, Xu X, Mohite OS, Nuhamunada M, Xu Z, Murphy R, Bodawatta K, Abdulla MH, Sonnenschein EC, Weber T, Kovács ÁT (2024) Expanding the genome information on Bacillales for biosynthetic gene cluster discovery. Scientific Data 11:1267 (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-04118-x)
• Northen TR, Kleiner M, Torres M, Kovács ÁT, Nicolaisen MH, Krzyżanowska DM, Sharma S, Lund G, Jelsbak L, Baars O, Kindtler NL, Wippel K, Dinesen C, Ferrarezi JA, Marian M, Pioppi A, Xu X, Andersen T, Geldner N, Schulze-Lefert P, Vorholt JA, Garrido-Oter R (2024) Community standards and future opportunities for synthetic communities in plant–microbiota research. Nature Microbiology 9: 2774–2784 (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-024-01833-4)
• Xu X, Pioppi A, Kiesewalter HT, Strube ML, Kovács ÁT (2024) Disentangling the factors defining Bacillus subtilis group species abundance in natural soils. Environmental Microbiology 26(9): e16693 (https://doi.org/10.1111/1462-2920.16693)
• Lyng M, Þorisdóttir P, Sveinsdóttir SH, Hansen ML, Jelsbak L, Maróti G, Kovács ÁT (2024) Taxonomy of Pseudomonas spp determines interactions with Bacillus subtilis. mSystems 9: e00212-24 (https://doi.org/10.1128/msystems.00212-24)
• Lyng M, Jørgensen JPB, Schostag MD, Jarmusch SA, Aguilar DKC, Lozano-Andrade CN, Kovács ÁT (2024) Competition for iron shapes metabolic antagonism between Bacillus subtilis and Pseudomonas marginalis. ISME Journal 18:wrad001 (https://doi.org/10.1093/ismejo/wrad001)
• Kovács ÁT (2023) Plant–microbe interactions: Plant-exuded myo-inositol attracts specific bacterial taxa. Current Biology 33(15):825-827 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.06.066)

• microbiome
• plants
• resilience

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