Philip Poole - Biography#

Philip Poole (PSP) (PI) is Professor of Plant Microbiology at the University of Oxford (UoO), Department of Plant Sciences (DPS) and a senior research fellow of Somerville College Oxford. Over 20 years he has built a world-leading group examining plant-microbe interactions, with 26 years of continuous support from the UK’s BBSRC (26 grants as PI) and 10.5 millions pounds in funding. He lead the large multiple 9 group BBSRC-NSF program on Synthetic Symbioses (2014-2019), aiming to transfer nitrogen fixation to plant-colonising bacteria and lead the India UK Nitrogen fixation consortium consisting of 10 groups (2016-2019). His expertise is in nitrogen fixation, rhizosphere microbiology and community structure (Nature 422:722; PNAS 103:19933; PNAS 106:12477, Genome Biol 12:R106; ISME 7:2248; ISME 9:2349). PSP elucidated the mixed ammonia alanine pathway for nitrogen secretion by legume bacteroids and showed that bacteroids are effectively ammoniaplasts that become symbiotic auxotrophs dependent on the plant. He has pioneered the use of bacterial Lux biosensors for a wide array of metabolites, enabling a radically new approach to screening plant mutants and natural variants for altered root function (Plant Phys 174:1289). PSP developed transcriptomics and global mutagenesis strategies (e.g. INSeq) under sterile conditions, and metatranscriptomics in soil, to examine relationships between the microbiome, plants and their genotypes. He is currently using these integrated approaches to model the biochemistry and physiology of nitrogen fixation in legume nodules. In particular how the lifecycle of rhizobia changes from rhizosphere colonisation to differentiation into nitrogen fixing bacteroids (PNAS 2020 In Press). He is co-director of the Oxford Centre, Plants for the 21st Century. He has served on the editorial boards of Microbiology UK and The Journal of Bacteriology. He served on the advisory board of the European Bioinformatics Metagenomics group and is currently sits on the international advisory board of Pivot Bio and acts an advisor to Novozymes on nitrogen fixation.