Paola Bonfante is a Professor Emerita of plant biology at the University of Turin, she has studied symbiosis between fungi and plants (mycorrhizae), associations that involve 90% of plants with significant impacts on ecosystems, as well as on agriculture. Using cellular and molecular biology investigated the biological-functional diversity of mycorrhizal fungi and how they communicate and interact with the host plant. She discovered endobacteria living inside mycorrhizal fungi and with omic approaches she described how they modulate some functional traits of fungal hosts.