Esperanza Martinez Romero

Title : Can endophytes become human probiotics?

Abstract:

We proposed an endophytic-enteric cycle to account for the flow of bacteria from plants to animal guts (Martinez-Romero et al 2021). From plants, valuable bacteria to be used as probiotics have been and will be obtained. Notably, plant and gut bacteria are intermingled in their phylogenies indicating that there is a common pool of bacteria that may inhabit both guts and roots. We found however that there may be a differential gene expression of these bacteria in these distinct habitats. On the other hand, human pathogens may be found as natural endophytes in food products. Pathogenic endophytes are not removed by surface disinfection procedures. To avoid plant colonization by pathogens, plant inoculation with probiotics may help. Thus, probiotics could be ingested directly from raw fruits and vegetables.

Biography:

Professor Esperanza Martínez-Romero is a professor and head of the Genomic Ecology Program at the Genomic Sciences Center at UNAM. She studies the mutualistic symbioses of bacteria with plants and animals native to Mexico using metagenomic and functional genomics approaches. She was a pioneer in the molecular study of the nitrogen-fixing symbioses of beans and endophytes of corn and beans. She has given workshops and advice to agricultural producers. She described new species of bacteria from plants and insects from Mexico, some of them nitrogen-fixing bacteria. The strains that she obtained have been deposited in official bacterial collections and some of them are used as inoculants or biofertilizers in agriculture. She has received awards and prizes such as the National University Award, the Mexican Academy of Sciences Award and recently, the National Science Award of Mexico in December of 2019 and the UNESCO Prize for Women in Science in March 2020. She has been recognized as a highly cited Mexican scientist. She has published 216 articles in international journals, 23 book chapters and 11 genome announcements. She has received more than 20,400 citations to her published work, with an H-index of 80.