Research Interests: For plants and animals, bacterial colonization and infection can provide dramatic benefits to health, growth, and reproduction. Yet, bacterial mutualism is often evolutionarily unstable: harmful mutants can invade symbiont populations and cause cooperation to collapse. The Sachs Lab tests fundamental theory about the evolution, ecology, and mechanistic bases of plant-bacterial mutualism.

Our empirical interests are broad and we use a combination of field, experimental, cytological, in vitro, and genomic approaches. There are three overlapping research programs  that we focus upon: I) We investigate the coevolution of bacterial exploitation and plant control. II) We study the evolution and epidemiology of plant-associated bacteria, focusing on key traits such as epidemic spread and multi-drug resistance. III) We examine how host plants constrain bacterial exploitation, using in vitro, cytological, and genetic tools.