Missions

Infectious disease is often the major selective agent in nature, and we cannot understand how populations evolve without understanding their pathogenic microbes. Beyond host immunity, an important factor determining the ability of pathogens to invade and proliferate in a host is the resident microbiota, but we are only beginning to glimpse its multifarious impacts. We know even less about interactions among pathogenic microbes themselves. Any effort to explain how pathogen communities, or pathobiota, develop within a host requires knowledge about the extent to which pathogens engage in competition, commensalism and cooperation, both with other pathogens and the rest of the microbiota. In the PATHOCOM project (https://figshare.com/articles/preprint/PATHOCOM_proposal/13174337), we aim at setting up a program that integrates large-scale field observations of microbiota/pathobiota in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana with ultra-high-throughput experimental tests of host-dependent interactions among microbes, allowing predicting stable pathogen-pathogen-microbiota interactions by modelling. In this context, the technician position is part of the second step of the PATHOCOM project, which aims at (i) characterizing the interactions (competition, cooperation…) among 500 whole-genome sequenced natural bacterial strains of three pathogenic species representative of the pathobiota (150 strains per species) and 50 commensal species representatives of the microbiota, and (ii) describing the genetic architecture underlying these interactions. This 18-month technician position is funded by the ERC (European Research Council) and is part of an interdisciplinary and collaborative project with the research groups of Detlef Weigel (Max Planck Institute, Tubingen, Germany) and Joy Bergelson (New-York University, USA).

Activités

The technician will be part of a group of several people (engineer assistants, engineers, post-doc…) to characterize in planta interactions among the 500 natural bacterial strains. He/she will be in charge of growing plants in in vitro conditions, growing bacterial strains in in vitro conditions, preparing media for growing plants and bacteria, co-infecting plants with the help of pipetting robots, collecting plants several days after inoculation and extracting the DNA from these plants.

Compétences

Applicants should have very good skills in plant cultivation, microbiology and molecular biology. Fluent English is required

Contexte de travail

The LIPM offers an excellent scientific environment of teams working on plant-microbe or plant-plant interactions (https://en.lipme.fr/). As a member of the LabEx (Laboratory of Excellence) TULIP (https://www.labex-tulip.fr/labex-tulip_eng/) and of the FR AIB Research Federation (http://www.fraib.fr/), the LIPME also benefits from key interactions with other relevant plant and ecology labs, local facilities and platforms (including in imagery and high-throughput phenotyping).
For more information about the ECOGEN team: https://en.lipme.fr/ecogen-1

Contraintes et risques

The technician will be located at the LIPME. The laboratory is governed by internal regulations.