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Catherine Golstein
Sat 23 June 2007
 GL-TTP,38 rue de Berri,75008, Paris,FranceMini-biographyDuring her doctoral and post-doctoral work (John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK, 1997-2001; Indiana University, Bloomington, USA, 2001-2005), Catherine Golstein contributed to the development of a new paradigm for plant disease resistance. Her work on the molecular complexity underlying the indirect activation of plant defenses by pathogen effectors is published in Science Magazine. In 2005, Catherine embraced the career of Scientific Manager of GL-TTP, taking a broader responsibility in the advancement and application of science. Her double formation as research scientist and agricultural engineer (ENSAR, Rennes, France, 1996) should allow her to match the cutting edge of plant science and biotechnologies with the real needs and constraints of plant breeders and end-users. Welcome and objectives of the workshop
Catherine Golstein
GL-TTP, 38 rue de Berri, 75008 Paris, France.
c.golstein@gl-ttp.com
On behalf of GL-TTP and the workshop organising committees, I am happy to welcome you to the 1st GL-TTP workshop, “Targeting Science to Real Needs”.
The overall objectives of the 1st GL-TTP Workshop are to:
- facilitate communication, understanding and direct interaction between research and industry to expedite the genetic improvement of grain legumes,
- inform research scientists of the needs and constraints of legume breeders in terms of genetic resources, breeding objectives, and will and capacity to integrate molecular technologies in their breeding strategies,
- address the specific needs and interests of grain legume breeders through concrete examples of research application, training sessions and transfer of genetic material,
- propose and brainstorm technology transfer projects targeted at the GL-TTP members for the short, middle and longer terms,
- set up partnerships within and between research and industry to collaborate and refine common projects, share resources, and either co-finance their projects or seek external funding together with the assistance of GL-TTP.
Reflecting the needs of grain legume breeders identified and prioritised through GL-TTP surveys, the workshop will focus on the exploitation of genetic resources, and on the concrete use and integration of molecular technologies in breeding. The main themes addressed in this first workshop will be genetic diversity, disease resistance, abiotic stress tolerance and seed quality.
Flash reports from the genetic resources survey
Catherine Golstein
GL-TTP, 38 rue de Berri, 75008 Paris, France.
c.golstein@gl-ttp.com
It is widely recognised that the genetic diversity of cultivated plants has narrowed as a result of thousands of years of domestication, migration bottlenecks and breeding activities. As a consequence, current varieties are generally less responsive to changing conditions, such as climate change, land degradation, water scarcity or pathogen evolution. Therefore, there is a need to review the extent and range of exotic genetic resources used in today’s breeding programmes in order to seek ways of increasing the genetic diversity available in the crop gene pool for the generation of better adapted varieties.
In this context, there is a concern that plant breeders do not exploit the current germplasm banks as much as they could. One of the goals of GL-TTP is to facilitate the access and exploitation of genetic resources for their use in breeding programmes.
GL-TTP organised a first survey among its members to assess the breeders’ awareness of the level of genetic diversity effectively used in their breeding programmes, to evaluate their current use of wild germplasm and germplasm banks, and to identify the bottlenecks of exploitation of wild germplasm.
A second survey was organised to explore how genetic resources are characterised in breeding programmes, how diverse data sets are managed and integrated in breeding programme databases and which available characteristics are actually exploited in designing breeding strategies.
I will give brief reports of these surveys throughout the workshop. FLASH 1 will report on the breeders’ usage of germplasm banks, FLASH 2 on the genetic diversity and exotic germplasm introduction in breeding programmes, FLASH 3 on whole-genome profiling use in relation to genetic diversity, and FLASH 4 on integrated data management.
The genetic resources sessions S2, S3 and S4, as well as the integrated data management session S9 of the GL-TTP workshop, have been conceived in a large part to address the issues identified in these surveys.
Genotyping project for pea breeding programmes
Catherine Golstein
GL-TTP, 38 rue de Berri, 75008 Paris, France.
c.golstein@gl-ttp.com
Throughout the workshop, we will hear of the development of new high-throughput genotyping technologies and corresponding sets of markers. These new technologies allow the fingerprinting of whole genomes, thereby providing tools to measure the genetic distance between individual plants, to identify new genotype-specific genetic loci associated to specific traits of interest, and to follow parental DNA fragments in breeding programmes.
I will propose to select a common set of markers, taken from the markers developed to study the genetic diversity and population structure of Pisum germplasm, to use in a collaborative project to evaluate the genetic diversity present within and in between breeding programmes, as well as in relation with germplasm bank collections.
The breeders would obtain valuable information about the "genetic position" of their lines among other breeding lines (or released varieties) and in relation to those genebank collections, giving them a better measure of the relative genetic diversity used in their breeding programmes.
As a consequence, they could control better the increase of the genetic diversity used in their breeding programmes by introducing new lines genetically distant from their genetic pool, directly from germplasm banks, from other breeding programmes with appropriate agreements, or from released varieties. In combination with a trait-specific targeted approach, rigorous phenotyping and genotyping, this strategy may drastically accelerate the genetic improvement of cultivated pea and increase the potential for adaptability of pea varieties.
We will discuss with experts present at the workshop the type and number of markers to genotype, how to select them, which technology to use, how to analyse the data, whether and where to centralise the genotyping and analysis of the data, how many individual plants to select from the different breeding programmes involved, etc.
We will also brainstorm ways for plant breeders to uptake simple, robust, and cost-effective marker methodologies derived from these technologies for their own use in their breeding programmes.
This proposal, developed for pea, can be transposed in other legume species using a similar strategy.
Overview of functional genomic platforms developed in GLIP
Catherine Golstein
GL-TTP, 38 rue de Berri, 75008 Paris, France.
c.golstein@gl-ttp.com
In the quest to understand the genetic and molecular basis of key traits to improve the performance of legume crops, the EU Grain Legumes Integrated Project (GLIP) has generated a number of tools of interest to the research scientists and plant breeders.
Because most legumes have large and complex genomes, GLIP focuses on a model legume more amenable to molecular genetics study, Medicago truncatula. GLIP contributes to the international collaborative effort to sequence the whole gene space of Medicago (www.medicago.org/). Two third into the project, the total number of Medicago genes is estimated at about 65,000. What do these 65,000 genes do? How do they contribute to your favourite trait?
Three levels of answer in GLIP:
1) Gene function is predicted by powerful bioinformatics tools established by the IMGAG (International Medicago Genome Annotation Group), which annotate gene sequence based on previous sequence/function analysis in other genome projects. Although informative, this automated annotation only provides hypothetical gene functions.
2) Transcriptomics, or genome-wide gene expression profiling, provides information on the regulation of gene expression in a range of experimental conditions, thus giving correlative evidence for the involvement of specific genes in specific functions.
3) Functional genomic platforms have been developed to characterise gene function by systematically disrupting them and analysing the phenotypic consequences.
In this talk, I will present an overview of the functional genomics platforms developed in GLIP for Medicago truncatula. Three types of platforms have been generated, based on the mode of disruption of gene function: chemical mutagenesis (involved in the TILLING platform), Fast Neutron deletion and retrotransposon insertion. I will insist on the complementarity of the different platforms, and provide information for potential users interested in assessing the function of their favourite candidate genes.
The pea TILLING platform generated in GLIP will be described in greater details by Abdel Bendahmane in the next presentation.
Brainstorming pipelines for technology transfer
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