On 8 April 2025, Holger Puchta (KIT, Karlsruhe) will present insights to his current research as part of the SNP2Prot Colloquium Series.
Speaker: Holger Puchta (KIT, Karlsruhe)
Title: Applying CRISPR/Cas to plants: From gene editing to genome restructuring
Date: Tuesday, 8 April 2025
Time: 5 pm
Location: Lecture hall E.02, Theodor-Lieser-Strasse 9 (Heide Süd Campus), 06120 Halle (Saale)
Abstract: Till today programmable nucleases as CRISPR/Cas have been applied to plants mainly on genes for the improvement of traits. However, breeding also requires the breaking or establishing genetic linkages on the chromosome level. Recent improvements in sequence analysis of crop plants reveal that multi Mb long inversions occur with high frequency between different genotypes, leading to crossover suppression. We were not only able to demonstrate that inversions up to almost chromosome size can be achieved in Arabidopsis thaliana by application of CRISPR/Cas, but also meiotic recombination can be redirected this way. Thus, on one side a recombination dead region could be reactivated after 5000 years and on the other almost a complete chromosome could be excluded from genetic exchange. We also induced inversions of serval Mbs to move pericentric heterochromatic regions into euchromatic chromosome arms. Interestingly, we could not detect any significant change in chromatin state nor expression patterns in the next generations. Using Cas9, we were also able to induce heritable translocations in the Mb range between heterologous chromosomes in Arabidopsis. Again, we found robust conservation of the transcriptome and the epigenome to such changes. This indicates that we should be able to restructure plant genomes on an even more global scale. Some recent results sustaining this hypothesis will be presented.
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If you like to meet with the speaker, please contact the host, Sascha Laubinger in advance.
The SNP2Prot Colloquium Series is integrated to the
- Halle Plant Science Colloquium (HPSC) – https://www.landw.uni-halle.de/prof/pflanzenernaehrung/hpsc/
- IPB Seminar Series – https://www.ipb-halle.de/forschung/symposien-und-kolloquien/vortraege/ipb-seminare