Carolina Escobar Rodríguez

University of Innsbruck | UIBK · Institute of Microbiology

The association of the plant microbiota is a successional process that starts with the seed and its intrinsic microbiota. The recently reported relevance of seeds as carriers of microbiota has encouraged investigations of the assembly of these communities in different tissues. Here, we address the contributions of both seed and soil bacterial micro...

The modes of interactions between plants and plant-associated microbiota are manifold, and secondary metabolites often play a central role in plant-microbe interactions. Abiotic and biotic (including both plant pathogens and endophytes) stress can affect the composition and concentration of secondary plant metabolites, and thus have an influence on...

Fungal parasitism depends on the ability to invade host organisms and mandates adaptive cell wall remodeling to avoid detection and defense reactions by the host. All plant and human pathogens share invasive strategies, which aid to escape the chitin-triggered and chitin-targeted host immune system. Here we describe the full spectrum of the chitin/...

Seed-associated bacteria represent an important reservoir of microorganisms passed onto progeny plants and have been postulated to be important for early plant development. According to few reports some bacterial taxa seem to be transferred from seed to seed and some seed-associated microorganisms may derive from insect visits during flowering, how...

Virtually all studied plant tissues are internally inhabited by endophytes. Due to their relevance for plant growth and health, bacterial microbiota of crop plants have been broadly studied. In plant microbiome research the root is the most frequently addressed environment, whereas the ecology of microbiota associated with reproductive organs still...

The flexible and transformable cell wall reacts fast to changing environments and prevents host defense mechanisms in (phyto-)pathogenic and plant beneficial fungi. Next to glucans, chitin is one of the major components of the cell wall that confers strength and rigidity but contributes also to its flexibility. Fungal chitin chains are chiral heter...

Background Seeds host bacterial inhabitants but only a limited knowledge is available on which taxa inhabit seed, which niches could be colonized, and what the routes of colonization are. Scope Within this commentary, a discussion is provided on seed bacterial inhabitants, their taxa, and from where derive the seed colonizers. Conclusions Seeds/a...

Background Species of the fungal genus Trichoderma are important industrial producers of cellulases and hemicellulases, but also widely used as biocontrol agents (BCAs) in agriculture. In the latter function Trichoderma species stimulate plant growth, induce plant defense and directly antagonize plant pathogenic fungi through their mycoparasitic ca...

Phenotype of nptII / tga3Q207L co-transformants on PDA and PDA + 80μg/ml geneticin. The figure shows the colony morphology of co-transformants 3/3 and 4/5 (with ectopic integration of the tga3Q207L gene) and co-transformant 2/1 (with homologous integration of the tga3Q207L gene) grown on PDA and PDA + 80μg/ml geneticin for 4 days at 28°C in the dar...

Mycoparasitic Trichoderma species are applied as biocontrol agents in agriculture to guard plants against fungal diseases. During mycoparasitism, Trichoderma directly interacts with phytopathogenic fungi, preceded by a specific recognition of the host and resulting in its disarming and killing. In various fungal pathogens, including mycoparasites,...