Diana Savchyn ’25, Chemical and Biological Engineering

Diana Savchyn ’25

Major

Chemical and Biological Engineering

Project Title

Probing Microbial Colonization of Plants During Drought to Enable Microbe-mediated Resilience in Crops

Presentation Link

View Diana's Presentation

Intimate associations between microbes and plants can impact plant growth, productivity and resilience to stresses such as drought. This project aims to isolate a complete bacterial collection from two model plants, Arabidopsis and Brachypodium, in order to better understand the genetic makeup of the rhizosphere, the below ground location where plant roots and soil microbes interact. After successful isolation of the microbial collection, the goal is to choose focal microbial strains for genetic engineering to elucidate the genetic mechanisms that positively or negatively affect the host plant. I worked to grow, purify, identify and store a complete collection of isolated microbial strains. I found this project very compelling because I was able to collect roughly 500 microbial isolates over six phyla, which helped me understand the scale of rhizosphere diversity. In addition, I was able to collect data on microbial growth behaviors such as growth time, morphology and media preferences, which will inform future work with the specific strains. For my senior thesis, I plan to focus on a specific microbial genus such as Streptomyces to mechanistically define the essential plant-microbe interactions that occur during drought. These mechanistic understandings will inform efforts to develop new technologies in bio-agriculture industries.

*  This internship is connected to the HMEI Water and the Environment Grand Challenges project, “Probing Microbial Colonization of Plants During Drought to Enable Microbiome-Mediated Resilience in Crops.”