This course is intended for graduate students and upper-level undergraduates interested in the bacterial world beyond E. coli, especially as it is associated with plants. The prerequisites are a basic microbiology course and some genetics or biochemistry or instructor approval.
We will learn about the bacteria that live on, in, and around plants. Some of these bacteria cause devastating disease epidemics in crop plants, some are mutualists without whom the plant could not survive, and some control diseases and insect pests. Because these organisms can be easily genetically manipulated and tested on hosts, research in this area is proceeding at an astonishing pace and the molecular details of many of these interactions are now known. Even more excitingly, we can often now connect the molecular interactions with the ecological and population-level forces confronting these bacteria and their hosts in their natural habitat.