Omri Finkel
Education:
2014
Ph.D.
Environmental Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. The
ecology and
biogeography of microbial epiphytes on Tamarix, a salt secreting desert
tree
Supervisor:
Prof. Shimshon Belkin.
2007
B.Sc.,
Biology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Project Description:
The structure and function of host associated microbial communities, microbiomes, is affected by the host phenotype, but it can also drive it. Microorganisms are known to aid plants through processes like nutrient acquisition or protection from pathogens, but the complexity of microbial communities found in association with plants has limited our ability to draw general rules guiding the assembly and maintenance of a functionally robust microbiome. The formulation and empirical testing of these assembly rules are crucial, not only for their intrinsic scientific value, but also for the effort to harness microbes and synthetic microbial consortia to predictably improve crop productivity. I am currently working on construction of synthetic communities from a librarty of genome-sequenced isolates obtained from the roots of Arabidopsis thaliana. I am using genomic annotations and metabolic models to predict the microbe-microbe and microbe-plant interactions and to test these predictions in mesocosm.