Modelling the role of microbes in wine productions

Fungi and microbial communities symbiotically associated to vine plants not only help to promote productivity and health of the plants, but may also play an important role in modulating the quality of the wine that is produced. The extend of the influence of such communities remains however very much an open problem, as does the question of which molecular processes underly the crosstalk between the partners in the symbiosis and may help explain such influence.

The objectives of this PhD will be to develop the mathematical framework and computational methods that will enable to:

1. establish with greater certainty the effective role played by the fungi and microbial communities, and the extent of this role on the quality of the wine using the omics data produced by the other partners or available in the literature;
2. attempt to analyse and then model, notably at the metabolic and regulatory levels, the molecular processes that participate in the crosstalk between the communities and the plant host and may underly such role;
3. if possible, try to establish in which way such processes could be bio-synthetically manipulated to improve this quality.

Further information

• INRIA - Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique, RTD, France