Genomics

We concentrate on genes in crop plants that are responsible for traits that are important for breeding or agriculture. Depending on the problem, we either analyze the genetic material directly in the form of its genomic DNA or the gene expression using extractable mRNA.

Comparative questions on individual plants or groups of plants with contrasting phenotypes are suitable for this purpose: e.g. high vs. low producers, or resistant/tolerant vs. sensitive varieties. Depending on the trait, these are characteristics that can be influenced by one or more genes.

From the complement of all detectable genes of a plant, those are then filtered that show a reproducible difference between two or more contrasting phenotypes or noticable similarities within groups carrying the same phenotypic characteristics. Advances in sequencing technology, with ever-increasing data volumes and falling costs, enable comprehensive analyses with unprecedented sensitivity and accuracy. The comparative analysis of genomic DNA or mRNA-transcripts by next generation sequencing approaches has become an indispensable tool in molecular genetics.

For our projects, we cooperate with plant breeders/-producers/-collections, sequencing service providers and bioinformaticians. The data obtained from genome or transcriptome analyses are evaluated in our laboratory and structural variants such as SNPs, INDels or differentially expressed candidate genes are verified and validated on further, well-characterized plant material. For this purpose various quantitative PCR-based methods are applied. This ultimately leads to genes and markers derived from them that can be used in plant breeding or for diagnostic procedures.