In the following video from Illumina Inc you can get a look at the some of the research done by Caroline Roper of the University of California Riverside. She studies the relationship between plants, like the cultivated grapevine, and the community of microbes that live in symbiosis with them, taking the various parts of the ecosystem as an integrated whole. Knowing how those relationships work can improve agriculture, potentially in a more environmentally friendly way.
Roper has worked to learn more about Pierce's disease, a serious problem for grapevines that is caused by a bacterium, which is spread by an insect. You can see examples and a more in-depth description of the disease and its carrier in the video. The disease has had a terrible impact on the wine industry at a few points in history, and there is obviously a major interest among cultivators to keep it under control.
You can see in the latter part of the video how scientists are using genomics to understand more about how the disease is affecting grapevines, and how a fungus can inhibit the microbe responsible for causing the disease.
