Transforming Cereal Genomics: Tooling Up For Empowered Phenotyping Platforms

University Of Rhode Island, Kingston RI

Investigators

Abstract

PI: Albert P. Kausch (University of Rhode Island) Co-PIs: Zhanyuan Zhang (University of Missouri-Columbia), Maria Moreno and Stephen Dellaporta (Yale University) The significance of cereal crops to global agriculture, economy, food security and international stability is well documented and widely understood. The functional development of a genome-level knowledge base linking genes to traits through the use of transgenics in cereal species is critical to understanding fundamental physiological functions important to crop improvement. Transgenics are integral to modern agricultural practices and to basic research for the assessment and validation of plant gene function. Emerging technologies such as plant synthetic biology and metabolic engineering depend heavily on transgenic technologies. This project is aimed at discovery, design and assembly of a new innovative paradigm for cereal transformation to empower whole genome-level basic research by enabling critical transgenic technologies required for functional analyses and phenotyping platforms. In addition to the training of students and postdoctoral associates, the project will establish a Cereal Transgenics Working Group for the development and rapid dissemination of cereal transformation resources including germplasm, protocols, and training workshops. Nucleic acid sequences generated will be deposited at GenBank. All biological materials including germplasm, vectors and reagents will be available upon request and through long-term repositories such as national germplasm centers and the American Tissue Culture Collection (ATCC). Software tools developed during the project will be made available for download at sourceforge.net. Details on protocols and use of software will be available in supplemental materials published in manuscripts, as well as available at the project's website. The goals of this project are to expand cereal transgenics capabilities and develop a set of comprehensive tools and resources that will maximize the potential and utility of existing and new emerging genomic resources in cereal crops. The specific objectives of this project are: (1) to develop advanced cereal transformation technologies including efficient event analysis of next-generation vectors, and expression cassettes for cereals; 2) to enable genome editing capabilities (CRISPR-Cas9) to cereals; (3) to establish best practices for efficient transformation of selected cereal genotypes including highly recalcitrant inbred lines of maize and (3) to institute critical activities that will facilitate technology transfer to other laboratories requiring cereal transformation including workshops and training activities. These objectives will be achieved by an integration of technologies across various fields of plant biology including advanced cell and tissue culture, transgenic biology, molecular biology, genomics, information management, and training to disseminate and facilitate actual technology transfer.