We are excited to announce that our proposal, The UW-Madison Microbiotron: A modular experimental platform to crack open the plant-soil-microbe black box, was funded this past week through a UW-Madison Microbiome Initiative Infrastructure Grant!

The Microbiotron proposal was a collaborative effort, with many Co-Is from different departments within the university, including the Jackson, Lankau, Panke-Buisse, and Silva labs, with support from the (Mega)Biotron, and with a special shoutout to postdoc Dr. Tim Berry, who really brought the proposal together. The project aims to overcome common limitations of soil/plant laboratory incubations, by developing a set of 48 modular, instrumented, and highly controlled incubation chambers (illustrated in the diagram below). It will be constructed in the next two years, and will be available to researchers within and outside of the university.

Congratulations to all the other funded projects – we look forward to following the interesting research that will come out of this awesome UW initiative.