FUTURE OAK: Characterising and engineering the oak microbiome to future-proof an arboreal icon

气候扰动、人为压力源和疾病暴发造成的树木枯萎导致了最近的森林大干扰，是全球主要关切的问题。直到最近，由于缺乏高通量的分析方法来对推动下降的多维因素进行基于系统的分析，进展一直受到阻碍。我们之前对英国本土橡树的一种复杂的衰退病--急性橡树衰退症的研究，强调了微生物群系如何转变为与树木疾病有关的“病原体”。这项工作挑战了一种病原体=疾病的范式，导致了关于微生物群在健康和疾病中的作用的新假说，并突出了修订经典疾病范式以包括微生物群的必要性。微生物群是植物健康的主要决定因素，我们假设橡树微生物群可以被操纵来改善寄主健康和抑制疾病。在这里，我们建议对健康和疾病中的橡树微生物组和代谢组进行景观尺度的分析，为设计和验证用于疾病抑制的工程微生物组提供信息。微生物组工程是一个新兴的研究前沿，具有许多新颖的应用。该项目将解决关于树木寄主与其微生物群、遇到的病原体和环境之间复杂的多维相互作用如何影响寄主适应性和疾病易感性的新假设。这项研究将开创森林微生物工程和精准医学的新前沿，以适应未来的标志性树种及其提供的生态系统服务。

Tree declines caused by climate perturbation, anthropogenic stressors and disease outbreaks have resulted in recent forest mega-disturbances and are a major global concern. Until recently, progress has been hampered by a lack of high-throughput analytical approaches for systems-based analysis of the multidimensional factors that drive declines. Our previous research on Acute Oak Decline, a complex decline disease of native British oak, has highlighted how microbiome shifts to a 'pathobiome', are associated with tree disease. This work challenges the one pathogen = disease paradigm, leading to new hypotheses on the role of microbiomes in health and disease, and highlighting the need to revise classical disease paradigms to include the microbiome. The microbiome is a major determinant of plant health, and we hypothesise that the oak microbiome can be manipulated to improve host fitness and disease suppression. Here, we propose a landscape-scale analysis of the oak microbiome and metabolome in health and disease, to inform the design and validation of engineered microbiomes for disease suppression. Microbiome engineering is an emerging research frontier with many novel applications. The project will address new hypotheses regarding how complex multidimensional interactions between the tree host and its microbiota, encountered pathogens, and the environment, influence host fitness and disease susceptibility. The research will initiate a new frontier in forest microbiome engineering and precision medicine to future-proof iconic tree species and the ecosystem services they provide.