Noticias

We are excited to announce that the international course on «Transformation and Genome Editing in Crops» will be held in Valdivia (UACh) from 11 to 13 January 2023. This course, led by Dr. Sadiye Hayta and Dr. Mark A. Smedley, will provide a comprehensive overview of the most recent techniques in crop transformation and genome editing through both theoretical and practical sessions.

On Wednesday, the program will begin at 14:30h with an overview of gene editing, including guide RNA and vector. After a coffee break, the program will continue with a session on the Golden Gate assembly.

On Thursday, the program will begin at 9:30h with a session on a transformation overview and wheat transformation. After a coffee break, there will be a session on screening for gene editing.

On Friday, the program will begin at 9:30h with a session on guide design and vector assembly in silico using the ‘Benchling’ platform. This will be followed by a practical session on the preparation of donor material and isolating wheat embryos for transformation. In the afternoon, there will be a visit to the «Estación Experimental Universidad Austral de Chile.»

This course will be in English and is a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience and deepen your knowledge about genome editing in crops. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to expand your skills and advance your career.

The registration is free and aimed at doctoral students. It must be completed at the following link before January 7, 2023: https://forms.gle/bemqeFdzBXezr2y78

Enroll now and join us in Valdivia for an unforgettable learning experience!

Our first Plant Molecular laboratory after pandemic¡¡¡¡¡. Excellent start with third-year biochemistry students at Universidad Austral de Chile, extraction of high quality RNA from wheat leaves.

To quickly and inexpensively detect wheat transformant plants that contain the mutation in our favorite gene generated by CRISPR, in NGPlab, we have identified restriction enzyme sites lost due to the mutation. So, if the CRISPR-Cas9 machinery managed to generate the mutation in our gene of interest, only «1 band» will be seen in an agarose gel, which cannot be digested by the restriction enzymes and will correspond to a mutant plant!!!!. This is opposite to what is observed in wild-type plants, where you will see the presence of «two bands» generated by the enzyme cutting. This way, we verify only the possible mutants by direct sequencing and optimize the lab’s resources.

This week we have been busy discussing new and interesting projects, but also enjoying the national holidays together.

We are very excited about the new NGPlab facilities at the Institute of Biochemistry and Microbiology (Valdivia, Chile). Very grateful to the Universidad Austral de Chile