Seminar: Mind the GxE=P; elemental content in plants

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Dr. Ivan Baxter is PI at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, USA, where he heads a research lab interested in plant adaptation to environment, with a special interest in understanding how the plant ionome reflects plant status. He will illustrate this in his seminar.

Plants take up elements from their soil environment using processes controlled by the genome. The complex nature of these interactions suggests that the elemental profile will be highly plastic with the genetic factors (G) influencing accumulation depending on which environment (E) the plant is grown in.  The complexity of this GxE interaction necessitates high throughput approaches to identify the underlying factors and their interactions. Using ionomics, (high-throughput elemental profiling), we analyzed levels of elements in maize kernels, soybeans and other species and tissues from lines and populations grown in multiple environments. The GxE interaction also makes conventional, multi-season approaches to mapping genes more difficult. In order to accelerate the identification of candidate genes for the loci underlying elemental accumulation, we have developed several approaches that leverage other genome-wide data sources. In his seminar, he will also describe the approaches of his lab to candidate gene identification including comparative genetics and co-expression analysis.

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Date: Monday 9 December 2019 (14:00 - 15:00h)
Location: Wageningen University, Radix (building 107), room W0.1
Contact person: Prof. Mark Aarts (mark.aarts@wur.nl)