Liana Burghardt
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
In mutualisms, two species both benefit from living together. Evolutionary theory predicts that such partnerships should shrink the genetic diversity of both partners.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Plant Science & Agriculture
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
mutualism
symbiosis
host-microbe interactions
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through May 2031
What they work on
- Identify which legume host traits support which rhizobial bacteria by analyzing plant characteristics and field samples from legumes, using traditional and AI-enabled image and statistical analysis.
- Test whether living alongside particular legume hosts maintains bacterial genetic diversity, using multigenerational greenhouse experiments and AI-based simulations of bacterial evolution.
- Characterize the function of Sinorhizobium meliloti genes that affect bacterial fitness inside Medicago truncatula hosts and infer selection on them, using whole-genome sequencing of competing strains and field allele frequencies.
- Examine how adaptation to soil interacts with adaptation to hosts, and identify the selection and reward mechanisms that keep the legume-rhizobia mutualism stable.
More about the research
Yet bacteria that can live either with or without a host often stay highly diverse. The lab studies this puzzle in one of the most important plant-bacteria partnerships. Legumes, such as clover and beans, host rhizobia, soil bacteria that live inside small root swellings called nodules. Inside the nodules, the bacteria convert nitrogen from the air into a form the plant can use, and the plant feeds them sugars. Because the bacteria spend much of their lives in soil and must find a new host each plant generation, they face selection both inside and outside hosts. Two projects ask how hosts, soil and evolution together shape these beneficial bacteria.
Why it matters
Nitrogen-fixing bacteria are key to eco-friendly farming and to nutrient cycling. Knowing which host plants and genes keep beneficial strains diverse and effective could help farmers and restoration projects choose better legume-bacteria pairings. It could also help predict whether bacteria will specialize on hosts or remain beneficial. More broadly, the work could improve how beneficial microbes are used to support host health in other systems.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Rebecca Creamer
New Mexico State University, NM·Plant Science & Agriculture
Survey seed collections, including China's Germplasm Bank of Wild Species, for seed-borne fungal endophytes across flowering plants to map where these symbioses occur.
Jiaqi Tan
Louisiana State University, LA·Ecology & Evolution
Test how elevated temperatures change microbe-microbe interactions and their effects on host fitness, using synthetic bacterial communities on duckweed, a small aquatic plant, in automated high-throughput experiments.
Mohammad Rahman
Alabama State University, AL·Plant Science & Agriculture
Screen diverse quinoa genotypes under contrasting nitrogen conditions to identify varieties that stay productive with reduced nitrogen fertilizer.
The school
Pennsylvania State University: 60 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 743 research doctorates a year.
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