Kuramae Group

The goal of my research is to understand soil microbiome interactions at community (taxonomical and functional) level for soil functioning. I also focus my studies on ecophysiology, genomics and postgenomics of microbial bio-indicators of land use change. My major research topics are:

(I) Land Use Changes and (II) Global Climate Change

The impacts of agriculture practices and the conversion of forest to agriculture on soil-borne microbial community composition and function, and the consequences in ecosystem functioning are not known. The agriculture practices (liming, nutrients, etc) have large impact on soil biochemistry that certainly has huge impact on belowground inhabitants, and consequences in GHG emissions, which are the contributors for global warming. Therefore my studies focus on determine (1) microbial taxonomical and functional bio-indicators to predict the consequences of changes in land use due to abandoning of agricultural land (biodiversity restoration practice), deforestation (forest converted to agriculture), sustainable agriculture (Amazon Black Earth as model), sustainable biomass production for the bio-based economy, and changes in arable cropping regimes; (2) genes in key functions (nitrification, nitrogen fixation, denitrification, methane oxidation), recalcitrant organic matter decomposition most indicative of specific soil status, in particular in soils with crops for biofuel biomass production; (3) determine functional bio-indicators involved in the emission/sequestration of greenhouse gasses (CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O); (4) develop high throughput platform to assess and monitor bio-indicators.

(III) Microbial diversity loss - linking diversity to function

Loss of soil-borne microbial diversity versus plant production (plant biomass quality and secondary metabolites). Plant defense may change when they are exposure to varying soil microbial community range of microbial diversities. Using metagenomics and metatranscriptomics approaches we study the effect of microbial community diversity loss by decreasing richness through inoculating in the sterile soil with a serial dilution of microbial suspensions from the same unsterilized soil. Here we link microbial diversity to function.

(IV) Bioinformatics

With the advent of the post-genomic era and the access to the bioinformatics, the information that is made available can be transferred immediately to the bench, allowing the understanding of the functionality of the biological systems for the conservation of the microbial biodiversity and its use for monitoring the soil quality. We focus on implementation of computacional/bioinformatics/statistical tools to analyze genomics/environmental genomics (next generation sequencing, microarrays, metagenomics) and post-genomics (metatranscriptomics) data and environmental/soil physicochemical data into soil microbial ecology.

Current Projects

NWO-Green (2015-2018): Unravelling the mechanisms underlying health and productivity promoting agricultural practices by fine-mapping rhizosphere communities
FAPESP-BE-BASIC:(Dutch)/BIOEN (Brazilian) (2015-2017). F08.002.06 BIOEN Unravelling the sinks and sources of nitrous oxide in sustainable bio based agriculture
Program Nuffic/CAPES (Netherlands/Brazil) (2014-2018). Microbiome core for soil ecosystem functioning.
NWO/CNPq (2014-2018). Harnessing the rhizosphere microbiome to enhance plant productivity.
NWO/FAPESP (2014-2018). Microbial Networks in control of greenhouse gases emissions in Bio-based agriculture MiniBag.
CNPq/CAPES - Sciences Without Borders (2014-2018), Genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic of Acidobacteria from Cerrado Biome
CNPq/CAPES - Sciences Without Borders Program (2014-2018). Impacts of land use and of the Babassu palm on microbial community composition and function and on sol quality in Maranhão State, earsten periphery of Amazonia
CNPq (2013-2017). Production of bio-fertilizer organo-mineral bioactive phophate.
VN-Basic (2013-2017). Soil Health & Quality monitoring for sustainable biomass production in Vietnam
CAPES/BRAZIL (International collaboration Netherlands/Brazil) (2012-2016). Soil-borne microbes in soil restoration: why they live there, how they respond to environmental factors, and what are the consequences in ecosystem services?
FAPESP/BIOEN (Bioenergy) - Program Nuffic/CAPES (Netherlands/Brazil) (2012-2016). Greenhouse gas emissions (N2O, CO2 and CH4) from soil with sugarcane production and impact on microbial community structure and function
BE-Basic (2012-2017) – Next Generation Array Systems for sensing soil Health Status
BE-Basic (2012-2017)- Project: 7.3.2-WP3: Metagenomic tools for intelligent gene mining