Universitat Zurich (UZH)
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Location : Zurich / Switzerland |
| Leader : Beat KELLER | |
| Website : www.uzh.ch/index_en.html |
Competences:
University of Zurich has 15 years of experience in wheat molecular genetics and genomics. It is interested in the molecular cloning and characterization of fungal disease resistance genes and QTL from wheat and barley and the group has isolated the Lr1, Lr10 leaf rust and the seven known alleles of the Pm3 powdery mildew resistance genes. Comparative genomics approaches in grasses support the cloning of agronomically important genes from wheat and barley. In context of this work, large, contiguous sequences from the two genomes were generated and the annotation of such sequences was improved, particularly for the regions containing repetitive elements. The database TREP (Triticeae Repetitive Element database) was a result of these activities.
Role:
Within WP3, cloning a QTL for Stagonospora nodorum resistance located on chromosome 3BS. In WP2, UZH will anchor the short arm of chromosome 1AS based on the contigs provided in WP1. Finally, UZH will contribute to the development of bioinformatics tools that are essential for the project (WP5).
Staff member’s profile:
Prof. Beat Keller (bkeller@botinst.unizh.ch) is full professor for plant molecular biology at the University of Zurich. He was educated as molecular biologist and worked first in the U.S. (Salk Institute) and later initiated a biotechnology research programme in a wheat breeding department (at Swiss Federal Research Station for Agronomy), before moving to UZH. He was Vice-President of the Swiss Academy of Sciences for six years. He is member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Plant Genome Programme GABI and on the Editorial Board of Theor. Appl. Genetics.
Dr. Thomas Wicker (wicker@botinst.uzh.ch) is a staff scientist at UZH. He graduated in molecular plant biology on the first large sequence from the wheat genome and founded the TREP database. He then spent a postdoctoral stay at the University of Georgia in Prof. A. Paterson’s group. There he performed bioinformatics work on aspects of grass genomes but also lead the project on the characterization of the repetitive part of the chicken genome. T. Wicker is a member of the international working group on the annotation of the repetitive elements of the wheat and barley genomes.
References:
- Bossolini, E., Wicker, T., Knobel, P. and Keller, B. 2007. Comparison of orthologous loci from small grass genomes Brachypodium and rice: implications for wheat genomics and grass genome annotation. Plant J., 49: 704-717.
- Yahiaoui, N., Brunner, S. and Keller, B. 2006. Rapid generation of new powdery mildew resistance genes after wheat domestication. Plant J., 47: 85-98.
- Travella, S., Klimm, E. and Keller, B. 2006. RNAi based gene silencing as an efficient tool for functional genomics in hexaploid bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Plant Physiol., 142: 6-20.
- Wicker, T*., Schlagenhauf, E.*, Graner, A., Close, T.J., Keller, B. and Stein, N. 2006. Pyrosequencing put to the test using the complex genome of barley. BMC Genomics, 7: 275. doi:10.1186/1471-2164-7-275
- Shen, Q.-H., Saijo, Y., Mauch, S., Biskup, C., Bieri, S., Keller, B., Seki, H., Uelker, B., Somssich, I.E. and Schulze-Lefert, P. 2006. Nuclear activity of MLA immune receptors links isolate-specific and basal disease-resistance responses. Sciene online (ScienceExpress.org, 21 Dec.)
- Scherrer, B., Isidore, E., Klein, P., Kim, J., Bellec, A., Chalhoub, B., Keller, B. & Feuillet, C. 2005. Large intra-specific haplotype variability at the Rph7 locus results from rapid and recent divergence in the barley genome. Plant Cell, 17: 361-374.
- Isidore, E., Scherrer, B., Chalhoub, B., Feuillet, C. and Keller, B. 2005. Ancient haplotypes resulting from extensive molecular rearrangements in the wheat A genome have been maintained in species of three different ploidy levels. Genome Res., 15: 526-536.
- Wicker, T., Yahiaoui, N., Guyot, R., Liu, Z., Dubcovsky, J. and Keller, B. 2003. Rapid genome divergence at orthologous LMW glutenin loci of the A and Am genomes of wheat. Plant Cell, 15: 1186-1197.
- Feuillet, C., Travella, S., Stein, N., Albar, L., Nublat, A. and Keller, B. 2003. Map-based isolation of the leaf rust disease resistance gene Lr10 from the hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) genome. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 100: 15253-15258.
- Guyot, R. and Keller, B. 2004. Ancestral genome duplication in rice. Genome, 47: 610-614.
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This project is supported by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme
for Research and Technological Development