Projects in the lab
The field of genetics has now entered into what is called the Post Genomic era. This refers to the fact that genomes of a number of important organisms have been completely sequenced and the next phase of the work will be to determine the precise function of each gene in the genome. This is a daunting task, since it is estimated that the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, which has the smallest genome of any higher plant, has over 25,000 genes. Therefore any approach that can selectively identify the function of a gene will be valuable. A detailed functional analysis of the Arabidopsis genome will be useful to provide insight in the genetic basis of similarities and differences of divers multicellular organisms including plants. In an extreme example, a comparison between 189 known human disease genes showed high similarity to 69 Arabidopsis genes, and 17 human disease genes were more similar to Arabidopsis genes than yeast, Drosophila and C. elegans (The Arabidopsis Genome Initiative 2000).
It is the goal of the laboratory to develop and apply reverse genetic technology, sometimes called homologus gene silencing, to the identification of the function of an important class of plant genes encoding cellulase enzymes. These enzymes play an essential role in plant growth and development as well as cell death. The technology has now been developed to the point that it can be used to inhibit the function of any specific gene. The missing function results in a visible mutation or detectable alteration in the expression of the gene that can be directly identified with a specific function in the organism. In addition, this technology can be used for plant improvement by specific inhibiting the expression of genes of pathogens, or plant genes known to confer susceptibility to stress.
Personnel in the lab
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Lab Protocols
Molecular Genetics/Genomic Links
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