Poster: Emerging Technologies
Abs #
878: TraitMill TM : Closing the application gap in functional genomics
CropDesign's technology platform closes the application gap between functional genomics and the development of novel agronomic traits. Today, functional genomics has largely concentrated on elucidating the biochemical and cellular function of genes using different approaches, such as transcriptome analysis, proteome analysis, and loss-of-function mutant studies. Though these approaches have indeed led to a much better understanding of plant gene functions, predicting the potential agronomic value of genes remains difficult, particularly with regard to complex traits such as growth rate, organ size, seed yield and harvest index. Trait development therefore still requires the testing of thousands of genes and the direct analysis of the effects of these genes on the trait of interest. CropDesign's TraitMillTM platform has been specifically designed for this purpose:
i) Using high-throughput cloning systems to modulate expression levels of genes in entire plants or in selected tissues.
ii) An industrialized plant transformation system in Arabidopsis and rice generates the tens of thousands of transgenic plants containing the gene constructs.
iii)Trait evaluation has been automated through "walking plant systems" for plant transport, digital imaging tools for plant evaluation and proprietary image analysis software for data production and statistical breakdown of results.
Potential growth controlling genes have been expressed under the control of promoters of different strength and tissue-specificity. Comparative analysis of these various constructs yielded some striking examples as to how gene effects are modulated by the mode of expression. Some of these examples will be presented, together with some novel insights in the molecular control of plant growth.
