Gianluca Grasso post-doctorant ISYEB (ÉQUIPE INEVEF & ABI)

• Voir la vidéo du séminaire de Gianluca Grasso qui présente ses recherches sur : Herbarium collections: from plants to microbes, unlocking insights for climate change research

Herbarium collections, with over 390 million specimens worldwide, are essential not only for plant taxonomy and conservation but also for investigating the impacts of global change. Recent research has expanded their utilization to include studies on climate adaptation, plant evolution, and their associated microorganisms. Indeed, through paleomicrobiology and the analysis of historical DNA, it has become possible to study microorganisms from the past and trace their evolution over the last 200–250 years using herbarium plants. Our current research embraces this new direction by extracting and sequencing historical DNA from soil preserved on the roots of herbarium plants, aiming to characterize ancient soil microbial communities. By comparing these communities with those in modern soils from organic farms, we seek to understand how agriculture and climate change have impacted microbial diversity and function over time.