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Scientific expertise Gene expression
Scientific expertise Gene expression
Technology Transfer
| Gene expression |
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Being pioneers in Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, our department is still pursuing research programs on T-DNA transfer.
The gene regulation group studies parameters influencing T-DNA transfer and T-DNA integration pattern, which has resulted in a T-DNA vector giving rise to transformants with single copy insert at high frequency. This group also searches for strategies avoiding vector backbone sequence integration and evaluates genome engineering strategies based on site-specific recombination.
Over the last 15 years, the gene regulation group also studied the process of gene silencing. Currently they study factors inducing transgene silencing, the efficiency of hairpin mediated silencing and silencing induced by invertedly repeated sense genes. Another activity in this framework is the unraveling of the mechanisms of transitive and systemic silencing in Arabidopsis and tobacco.
A third, and more recent, topic of the gene regulation group is random and targeted mutagenesis. They developed marker systems to score C:G to T:A transitions and homologous recombination.
The role of genome dynamics in growth control is studied in the chromatin and growth control group. More specifically, the research focuses on histone modifying complexes activating RNAPII transcription and their role in leaf growth.
These activities in the field of gene expression and genome dynamics obviously can aid the development of improved plant varieties at different levels, from decreasing the costs of elite event selection through improvements at the level of DNA transformation, up to improved expression strategies at different levels and for different purposes.
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