Invisible Guardians: Uncovering the Microbial and Chemical Basis of Disease Suppressiveness

Some soils have a hidden talent: they can protect plants from disease, even when a harmful fungus is present in the ground. This natural protection comes from the community of microbes living in the soil, but exactly which microbes are responsible, and how they do it, has long remained a mystery. In her PhD research, Jiayi Jing dug into one such "disease-suppressive" soil to uncover its underlying mechanisms. She found that certain soil bacteria produce some molecules that can help fend off Fusarium culmorum, a fungus responsible for major crop losses worldwide. To help study these mechanisms in a more controlled way, she also designed SynCom101, a web-tool built to design synthetic microbial communities to capture key functional traits of natural microbiomes. Together, this work uncovers some of the invisible guardians hidden in disease-suppressive soils, and the tools to study them further.