Projects

In the coming decades, it will no longer be environmentally sustainable to increase agricultural land to provide food for a growing world population. Instead, it will be necessary to improve average crop yields as well as to reduce environmental footprint of agriculture. The evaluated research program focuses on understanding the responses of plants to abiotic and biotic stress, which cause major losses in crop yield, with the goal of providing tools and knowledge for sustainable agriculture of the future. Moreover, the fusion of the two programs running in the department, will bring additional research across following core areas: environmental virology, virus inactivation technologies, and characterization of viral vectors for gene therapy.

The originality of this research lies in its multidisciplinary approach, including sensitive and generic microorganisms detection approaches, quantitative molecular biology tools, multiomics analysis, bioinformatics and mathematical modeling. This will enable to follow the spread of microorganisms and smart surveillance and forecasting of related disease risks. Furthermore, the proposed approach will provide insights into dynamics of the response using a combination of synthetic and systems biology.

Specific objectives of the research are:

- to study plant responses in complex environments using a combination of systems, synthetic and cell biology, considering multiple molecular levels at high spatiotemporal resolution,

- to study the biology, diversity, epidemiology, evolution and distribution of pathogenic and non-pathogenic microorganisms associated with plants, and develop reliable cutting edge assays for their detection and characterization,

- to develop new plant protection strategies and food safety strategies based on sustainable biotechnological methods,

- to perform groundbreaking research on environmental virology, virus inactivation and virusbased gene therapies.

- to upgrade the technological platform to support new developments in systems and quantitative molecular biology research and to develop new metrologically sound technological support for cutting edge identification and quantification methods, which may all be applicable in fields of pharmacology, human health and environment.

By proposed merge of both programmes, as we show here, we will stimulate stronger interaction between researchers within the department and thus ensure better impact both nationally and internationally.

SICRIS