The PhD course of 2007 entitled Applied and fundamental aspects of responses, signalling and developmental process in the root-microbe systems will be organised in St. Petersburg, Russia. The site and time of the course has been chosen to coincide and interact with the meeting of the research consortium working on Evolution of plant-microbe interactions. This research consortium belongs to the AB-RMS network and many senior researchers and the 10 PhD students working in the consortium will participate in the PhD course. The first part of the programme will include a scientific symposium with plenary sessions, oral research presentations and poster sessions. It will be followed by a scientific excursion, field studies, and 2 days especially designed for graduate students (literature reviews, group work tasks, presentation of own research projects, laboratory exercises). The graduate students will participate in the whole programme.