To understand and manipulate the interactions between plants and microorganisms, sterile seeds are a necessity. The seed microbiome (inside and surface microorganisms) is unknown for most plant species and seed-borne microorganisms can persist and transfer to the seedling and rhizosphere, thereby obscuring the effects that purposely introduced microorganisms have on plants. This necessitates that ...

Ciliates represent an important trophic link between nanoplankton and mesoplankton. Many species acquire functional chloroplasts from photosynthetic prey, being thus mixotrophs. Little is known about which algae they exploit, and of the relevance of inorganic carbon assimilation to their metabolism. To get insights into these aspects, laboratory cultures of three mixotrophic <i>Strombidium</i> spp. ...

The marine ciliate <i>Mesodinium rubrum</i> is famous for its ability to acquire and exploit chloroplasts and other cell organelles from some cryptophyte algal species. We sequenced genomes and transcriptomes of free-swimming <i>Teleaulax amphioxeia</i>, as well as well-fed and starved <i>M. rubrum</i> in order to understand cellular processes upon sequestration under different prey and light ...

<i>Aims</i> - Microorganisms play a dichotomous role in the soil nitrogen cycle through mineralization and immobilization. We aimed to understand how nitrogen availability modifies the effect of microorganisms on plant growth. We hypothesized that soil microorganisms would increase plant biomass following amendment with a substrate rich in organic nitrogen (net mineralization), be neutral when adding ...