Thanks, Sofia! Hope all is well

11/ 📄 feedback welcome!
🔬 Huge thanks to our amazing team, collaborators and funders! @marccamb.bsky.social @cenococcum.bsky.social @drcarriebrady.bsky.social @bpettifor.bsky.social
BBSRC, NERC, DEFRA, Scottish Government.

10/ Our work shows the potential of microbiome-based interventions for trees, just like those emerging in agriculture and human health. 🌍

9/ This shows that tree microbiomes can be engineered to suppress disease — a promising strategy for forest health and conservation. 🌲🛡️

8/ We then inoculated oak seedlings and logs with a disease-suppressive SynCom before pathogen challenge. The results were striking:
📉 Brenneria goodwinii (oak pathogen) ↓ 56% (seedlings), ↓ 71% (logs)
📉 Gibbsiella quercinecans (oak pathogen) ↓ 87% (seedlings), ↓ 95% (logs)

7/ Next, we assembled synthetic microbial communities (SynComs) from these isolates. In vitro tests showed they could suppress oak pathogens. 🧪

6/ We screened 22,000 isolates on agar plates for their ability to suppress oak pathogens linked to Acute Oak Decline - 341 of the isolates showed strong pathogen suppression. 💪🌱

5/ These isolates belonged to taxonomic groups that represented 61% of the total bacterial and 87% of total fungal sequences found in oak trees, based on 16S rRNA gene and ITS sequencing, respectively. A major resource for tree microbiome research! 🌳🦠

4/ We processed tree tissue samples for isolation in the field within a few hours of collection to maximise chances of culturing key microbiota, using our mobile lab setup.

3/ We built a culture collection of >30,000 bacterial and fungal isolates from 150 oak trees across 30 sites in Britain — the largest culture collections of its kind🌿

2/ Trees rely on their microbiome for health and resilience, but are increasingly impacted by disease. We asked ‘can we engineer these microbial communities to fight disease?’ 🌳🦠.

2/ Trees rely on their microbiome for health and resilience, but are increasingly impacted by disease. We asked ‘can we engineer these microbial communities to fight disease?’ 🌳🦠.

So pleased to see this Bex! Huge congratulations!!

Really cool paper!

Brilliant picture

Thank you, Dirk-Jan! We indeed enjoyed it with our Birmingham-Leiden collaboration group!
(Not tapas but restaurant part)

-with @marccamb.bsky.social @jamesemcdonald.bsky.social @xinmingxu.bsky.social and María Negre Rodríguez