Claude Becker
Genomics and epigenomics of plant-plant and plant-environment interactions
Research focus
Plants almost always grow in a community with other plants. They must therefore compete with their neighbors for limited resources such as nutrients, water, light, and space. Our research group is interested in a very special competition strategy in which plants produce and release chemical compounds to prevent their neighbors from growing. We want to understand how these chemicals act in the plant, how they influence the complex community of soil-dwelling bacteria and fungi, and how some species manage to tolerate the presence of these toxic compounds.
