Del Valle, Ilenne, Hsiao-Ying Cheng, Xiaodong Gao, Caroline A. Masiello, and Jonathan J. Silberg
Presented at the All Scientist Meeting and Investigators Field Tour (2017-10-06 to 2017-10-07 )
Many interactions between plants and microorganisms depend on communication through extracellular signaling molecules, whose bioavailable concentrations and half-lives can vary with environmental conditions and soil properties. Current technologies have limitations when trying to report on levels of plant root exudates and microbial secretions in soils because many analytical methods do not have enough sensitivity and chemical extractions are not entirely representative of what microbes are experiencing in their niches. Engineered microorganisms that “spy” on the microbial population present in the soil when sensing a particular biological process could be useful to study how matrix properties control cellular behaviors. Moreover, “bloggers,” synthetic soil microorganisms, that can report on their own behavior could be
valuable for understanding the effect of distinct spatial niches in soils. In this poster, we will describe our recent development of a new class of biosensors that report on the concentration of signaling molecules in soils by producing a rare volatile chemical (methyl halides) that can be measured in the headspace of samples. We will outline how we have developed gas-reporting biosensors to study signaling molecules used for microbemicrobe (acyl homoserine lactones) and microbe-plant communication (flavonoids), and we will show how these biosensors can be used to monitor the differential effect that soil amendments have on different types of signaling molecules. Additionally, we will describe a new ratiometric gas-reporting strategy that we have developed to improve signal robustness in hard-to-image soils. Finally, we will discuss how we are developing a set of artificial soils to more easily.
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