Dr. Kathryn M. Jones

I am interested in the symbiotic interaction between nitrogen-fixing rhizobial bacteria and their legume host plants. We use the agriculturally-important bacteria Sinorhizobium meliloti and Sinorhizobium medicae and their interactions with their plant hosts alfalfa and Medicago truncatula as a study system. Our goals are to understand: 1) How bacteria interact with and manipulate their environment during host plant invasion in such a way that the plant not only permits entry, but provides an invasion pathway for them; 2) Why the interactions of specific strains of Sinorhizobium with particular ecotypes of host plant species more successful than others and how the productivity of these interactions are controlled at the molecular level; 3) At what level host plants control the flow of resources to productive symbionts at the expense of unproductive symbionts (cheaters). We also have collaborations with the Stroupe lab (FSU) on the diversity and structural differentiation of phages of rhizobial bacteria, and with the Gabriel lab (UF) on citrus greening disease/HLB

Brar, A. K., K. M. Bilodeau, D. J. Trickey, C. S. Mackey, B. L. Redfern, G. T. Fisher, E. L. Simms, and K. M. Jones (2025) Non-nitrogen-fixing Sinorhizobium meliloti can escape sanctions in indeterminate alfalfa nodules, exhibiting parasitic growth. Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions accepted: . (<a href="https://apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/10.1094/MPMI-06-25-0074-R" target="_blank" >open access</a>) Loeven, A. M., A. N. Brown, F. U. Ebuara, K. M. Jones, and D. A. Fadool (2025) Both obesogenic and isocalorically-controlled diets drive changes in microbiota composition in a sex-dependent manner in mice. Physiology and Behavior 301: 115062. (<a href="10.1016/j.physbeh.2025.115062" target="_blank" >link</a>) Sather, L. M., N. Fazeli, J. V. Kearsley, K. M. Jones, and T. M. Finan (2025) Un