New, scalable approaches to capture significant amounts of atmospheric carbon (on the scale of gigatons per year [Gt/yr]) are urgently needed to slow, and perhaps even reverse, global warming. Living organisms—plants, microbes, and fungi—are excellent targets for a scalable solution, having both an immense potential to capture carbon from the atmosphere and store it in stable biomass that covers the surfaces of continents.

Our approach leverages world-class expertise at UC Davis and UC Berkeley's Innovative Genomics Institute in plant biology, genome editing, genome-resolved metagenomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics, stable isotope carbon tracing, and sophisticated analysis of multi-omics data. Our strategy will integrate modification of root architecture with optimized microbial associations. With this unique multidisciplinary approach we will define and enhance the pathways of microbial utilization and transformation of root carbon that lead to long-lived, stabilized soil organic carbon.

Root system architecture (RSA)—the length, number, position, and angle of different root types—determines the soil volume explored by the root and plays a major role in flow of carbon into the soil. RSA and root exudates shape the identity and functional capacities of soil microbiota; roughly half of the carbon fixed through plant photosynthesis is deposited by roots into the soil. To advance our mechanistic understanding of plant-microbe interactions and the soil carbon cycle we will examine relationships among plant genes, root system architecture, root exudates (including organic acids, sugars, amino acids and other small molecules secreted from the root), and soil mineral surfaces.

To achieve these goals, we will screen our fully sequenced mutagenized rice population to identify rice plants with deep, robust root systems. Using stable isotope tracing, we will track the flow of carbon from roots into the soil microbial community and surrounding mineral matrix using genome-resolved isotope tracing tools that our IGI team members have pioneered. We will use high throughput CRISPR screens to optimize target genes to produce root system architecture traits and exudates that enhance beneficial microbial associations and lead to soil aggregation, a key mechanism of soil carbon sequestration.

Our collaborators on this project our Jill Banfield, Jennifer Pett-Ridge, Dave Savage, and other team members at UC Davis and the Innovative Genomics Institute.

We are hiring two postdocs with expertise in plant molecular signaling, biochemistry, or metabolomics or with expertise in microbial metagenomics at the UC Davis location in the Ronald Laboratory.

Please upload your CV, three letters of reference, and a brief description of your research interests to this portal: Form

The positions are open until filled.

Ph.D. in plant genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, or metabolomics