Coming of age for the rhizosphere microbiome transplantation

Abstract

Microbiome transplants have the potential to disrupt agriculture and medicine by transferring the microbial genetic pool (and hence capabilities) from one host to another. Yet, for this technology to become reality, we need to understand the drivers shaping the success of microbiome transplant. We highlight here recent findings by Dr. Gaofei Jiang and colleagues. Using disease suppression as a model function, they highlight the microbiome characteristics making a successful transplant possible. We see this study is a seminal work making microbiome transplant an informed process that will replace the current error-prone trial procedures. We anticipate that the insights may catalyse a paradigm shift in microbiome management in agriculture and medicine.

Keywords

Microbiome transplant / Coalescence / Ralstonia / Biodiversity / Crop health

References

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Authors’ information

Prof. Dr. Alexandre Jousset is a microbial ecologist working on the assembly mechanisms of the plant microbiome. He combines in his research community ecology with plant-microbe interactions to design high-performance microbiomes protecting plants against biotic and abiotic stressors. He is founder and managing director of the AgriFood company Blossom Microbial Technologies B.V. and holds a professor position at the Nanjing Agricultural University.

Prof. Dr. Seon-Woo Lee is an applied microbiologist working on novel technologies promoting microbiome function. He is the Principal investigator of Molecular Plant Pathology/Microbiology Lab at Dong-A University, Korea. His group uses metagenomics to study plant-microbe interactions at a microbiome level and is developing a range of microbiome-based technologies including minimal synthetic microbiomes and phage modulation of the native microbiome.

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