Xanthomonas Oryzae Co-infections : developing methodologies to address their epidemiological consequences.

We are interested in rigorously assessing the actual prevalence of field Xo Co-infections. It would be desirable to discriminate the colonizing bacteria at an infraspecific level and generate Xo leaf metagenome assemblies to decipher metapopulation dynamics and the consequences of co-infection on the fitness of the individual genotypes. It is also critical to address the potential consequences of co-infection on resistance genes efficacy.
With the long term goal to address the prevalence, the ecological relevance and the epidemiological consequences of non- clonal rice leaf Xo infections, the XoCo project primarily aims at establishing the methodological framework necessary for this endeavor by first exploring a range of experimental parameters at a small scale in the laboratory. In a nutshell, the general objective is to develop expertise on ONT-based methodologies for the description of co-infecting Xo bacterial genomes variability inside a rice leaf sample.