Darcy McRose
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA·Microbiology & Immunology
Many important antibiotics come from soil, where microbes constantly encounter chemicals made by their neighbors and by plants. Yet little is known about which combinations of these small molecules a microbe actually meets in nature, or how those mixtures affect its growth and survival.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Ecology & Evolution
Plant Science & Agriculture
- Topics
soil microbiology
rhizosphere
root microbiome
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2030
What they work on
- Identify redox-active metabolites (electron-shuttling small molecules) made natively in soils and map which ones are produced together across root-associated microbial communities, using newly developed screens.
- Determine the molecular mechanisms by which coumarins, redox-active compounds released by plant roots, affect microbial growth and physiology.
- Test how co-occurring plant and microbial redox-active molecules combine to affect the growth, development and survival of microbial communities, using environmentally informed experiments.
More about the research
This project asks that question for redox-active molecules, compounds that work by moving electrons. Plants release such compounds at their roots in low doses, apparently to shape the microbial community there rather than wipe it out. Learning how soil microbes cope with this chemical mix may explain how microbes survive antibiotics in infections.
Why it matters
Antibiotic-resistant and hard-to-clear infections are a growing medical problem. Knowing how soil microbes survive mixtures of natural antimicrobial chemicals could help clinicians use existing antibiotics more effectively. It could also inform therapies that eradicate infections. Tools for finding and activating hidden antimicrobial compounds in soil organisms could speed the discovery of new antibiotics.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Elizabeth Shank
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, MA·Microbiology & Immunology
Describe which genes are active, which lineages cells come from, and how cells are arranged in space among Bacillus subtilis cells that make biofilm matrix, swim or form spores.
Richard Lankau
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Ecology & Evolution
Track how soil microbial communities and food webs develop on Midwestern farmland after farming stops or agroforestry begins, comparing sites with different times since abandonment and restoration practices.
Carolyn Brook Ibberson
University of Tennessee-Knoxville, TN·Microbiology & Immunology
Map the three-dimensional metabolic landscape of polymicrobial chronic wound communities at micron scale, combining confocal imaging, imaging mass spectrometry and spatial metatranscriptomics with the team's computational pipeline.
The school
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 25 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 692 research doctorates a year.
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