As the Earth’s population rises, it is increasingly important to find new ways to manage food demands and pollution. One strategy is to use endophytes, which are organisms—usually fungi or bacteria—that naturally live within a plant. These microbes can help the plant in various ways, from nutrient acquisition to increased resilience in stressful environments. There are multitudes of applications for these organisms, as they can be transferred from one plant to another, thereby transferring these helpful qualities. My first project aims to explore the possibility of using bacteria to protect plants from fungal diseases. This would reduce the need for manmade pesticides, which can have, a high cost, many detrimental environmental effects, and susceptibility to fungal resistance. The effectiveness of an array of bacterial strains on different fungal plant pathogens has already been determined. Now, the anti-fungal chemicals secreted by the bacteria must be identified. To do so, each fungus and bacterium will be plated together, and the area of inhibition will be collected. The chemicals secreted will be extracted with methylene chloride, and characterized via mass spectrometry. My second project involves studying phytoremediation, which is the use of plants to remove or modify pollutants in the environment. Arsenic is a fairly common and toxic pollutant. It has been observed that the effective endophytes used for this remediation produce a biofilm when in contact with arsenic. This biofilm production has not been quantified, and it is unclear if or how it affects the phytoremediation process. One possibility is that the bacteria sequester arsenic in the biofilm, potentially reducing the phytotoxic effects on the host plant. This second project will determine the production rate of biofilm and how that changes when exposed to arsenic.