Disentangling the Multi-scaled, Multi-genomic, and Multi-modal nature of plant-microbe symbioses

March 31, 2025 @ 12:15 pm to 01:15 pm

Rebecca Doyle, McMaster University, Hamilton

108 Wartik Laboratory
University Park

Abstract:
Plant-associated microbiomes, the community of microbes living on or within plant hosts, have long been known to impact the expression of critical plant traits, including growth and tolerance to environmental stress. Linking plant trait responses with environmentally-driven shifts in microbiomes has been the focus of many studies to date. Yet, few studies have explicitly considered microbial evolution, i.e., the shifts in the genetic composition within populations of microbes, which occurs on timescales much faster than host evolution. To better understand and predict how plant traits, such as crop yield, will respond to environmental change, my group (SyM3 Lab) uses the symbiosis (i.e., intimate interaction) between leguminous plant hosts and nitrogen-fixing bacteria known as rhizobia as an ecologically and economically critical model. We combine experimental evolution of rhizobial populations with advanced sequencing technologies to explore three critical features of symbioses (i.e., the three "M"s in SyM3): i) the Multi-scaled evolutionary "agents", including mobile genetic elements, microbial symbionts, and multicellular eukaryotic (macrobial) hosts; ii) the Multi-genomic traits emergent from interactions among these agents; and iii) the Multi-modal transmission (horizontal and vertical) that generates heritable variation in those traits. Overall, my research program, a unique multi-genomic, multi-scale, multi-modal (SyM3) effort in plant-microbiome studies, will provide a fundamental understanding of the role microbial evolution plays in generating heritable variation in plant traits.

About the Speaker:
Dr. Rebecca Doyle is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at McMaster University. Prior to McMaster, Dr. Doyle won a competitive Postdoctoral Fellowship through the Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she collaborated with researchers in the Infection Genomics for One Health theme. Dr. Doyle completed her PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto, and both her Bachelor’s (Honours) and Master's at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Dr. Doyle’s work on the evolution of mutualism, or beneficial interactions among unrelated species, and the powerful approaches she has developed, including experimental evolution coupled with whole genome sequencing and bioinformatics has received international recognition. Most recently, Dr. Doyle won two prominent early career awards including being a finalist for the New Phytologist’s Tansley Medal and a recipient of The American Society of Naturalist’s Jasper Loftus-Hills Young Investigator Award. Dr. Doyle’s work is often cited and has resulted in high-impact publications in journals including Science, mBio, Ecology, and New Phytologist.

Contact

Alisa Chernikova
azc6415@psu.edu