Where Bacteria, Fungi, and Plants Meet: Explore Plant Microbiome Interactions with Michelle Afkhami
Finding Genius Podcast
Richard Jacobs
4.4 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2022
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The human microbiome has been a hot topic recently, especially as it relates to our physical and mental health. And just like humans, plants host complex microbiomes of fungi and bacteria, which play crucial roles in their health, productivity, survivability, and more. Michelle Afkhami shares her insights.
Press play to learn:
- How plant microbiomes impact plant drought resistance
- What habitat fragmentation is and how it impacts productivity in native plant communities
- How plant defense chemicals can end up in nectar, thereby effecting pollinators
- The role of biological soil crust
Afkhami is an associate professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Miami. She joins the show to discuss her area of expertise: unique, complicated, and meaningful interactions between plants and microbiomes, both at the molecular and ecological levels.
Tune in and visit Michelle Afkhami (miami.edu) to learn more.
Episode also available on Apple Podcast: http://apple.co/30PvU9C
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | And so my lab and my personal research interest is in understanding how the interactions between |
| 0:06.0 | plants and their microbiomes, especially fungi, but also bacteria, the how they scale across |
| 0:11.6 | different levels of biological organization. So like they're interactions, how they impact |
| 0:15.8 | each other, but also how they might scale up to impact populations, communities, and ecosystem |
| 0:21.0 | functions. We are interested, for instance, how the endofites in the leaves of plants that can |
| 0:27.7 | produce alkaloids might impact like the nectar microbiome. This is because we know in some literature |
| 0:35.5 | that chemicals that the plant can produce for defense. Forget frequently asked questions. |
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| 1:10.3 | This is the Finding Genius Podcast. Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius |
| 1:20.5 | Podcast. Now part of the Finding Genius Foundation. I have Michelle Afkami. She's an associate |
| 1:26.0 | professor at University of Miami in the Department of Biology, and we're going to talk about micro-result |
| 1:31.2 | fungi and soil, and what's called the phylas for your microbiomes. Plants and the surrounding |
| 1:37.7 | ecosystem function. Michelle, thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk with you. |
| 1:43.2 | Well, great. Tell me a bit about your background and what got you interested in, and I guess |
| 1:47.2 | for lack of a better word, mushrooms or fungi? Yeah, sure. In general, I think a lot of people |
| 1:52.7 | realize that humans have diverse microbiomes that play important roles in human health and even |
| 1:58.8 | impact our physiology the way we think our pathology and so on. I think far fewer people |
| 2:05.3 | probably realize that plants also host a complex microbiome that's composed of fungi and of course, |
| 2:10.8 | also bacteria that play crucial roles in plant health, productivity, survival, and so on. |
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