Gerd Innerebner
= Gerd Innerebner
{c}
<Gerd Innerebner> is a researcher credited with experimental work on <microorganisms> associated with <plants>. He was first author of a 2011 study at ETH Zurich examining whether leaf-associated <bacteria> could protect <Arabidopsis thaliana> from disease caused by <Pseudomonas syringae>.<Protection of Arabidopsis thaliana against leaf-pathogenic Pseudomonas syringae by Sphingomonas strains in a controlled model system by Gerd Innerebner and others>[Original byline and affiliation; Abstract]{ref}
The motivating question concerned function: finding common <bacteria> on healthy leaves does not establish whether they help the <host (biology)>. The experiment compared plants with defined microbial associates and measured both visible outcomes and the abundance of the challenging organism. Some plant-derived <Sphingomonas> strains provided protection, whereas this effect did not extend to every tested member of the genus.<Protection of Arabidopsis thaliana against leaf-pathogenic Pseudomonas syringae by Sphingomonas strains in a controlled model system by Gerd Innerebner and others>[Abstract; Figures 1–2 and 5, response comparisons and strain differences]{ref}
A constructed measurement example illustrates the value of those two readouts. Suppose two treatments produce similarly green leaves, but one has $10^3$ <colony-forming units> of a test organism per gram of leaf and the other has $10^5$. Equal appearance would conceal a hundredfold difference in recoverable organism abundance. Conversely, lower abundance does not by itself specify which molecular mechanism caused it. These are illustrative values, not results from the paper.
Innerebner's work thus connects a descriptive question about community membership to an experimental question about effects on a <host (biology)>. It also shows why a property measured in particular microbial strains should not automatically be assigned to all organisms sharing a genus name.
\Image[https://micro.biol.ethz.ch/research/vorholt/people/people/_jcr_content/par/slideshow/images/image-8.imageformat.imagegallery3.2058401617.jpg]
{title=Gerd Innerebner}
{description=Portrait explicitly identified in ETH Zurich's Vorholt laboratory former-members page: https://micro.biol.ethz.ch/research/vorholt/people/people.html .}
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