Calendar Name: | seminars |
Scheduled for: | Friday, June 18 2010, 11:00 - 12:30 |
Event text: | Atle M. Bones CMBG, Department of Biology Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim NORWAY |
Details: | "From
Arabidopsis thaliana to Seminavis robusta: establishing a new diatom model system for functional genomics" ABSTRACT Starting research on Arabidopsis thaliana in the 1960?s our department has a long track record of using the #1 model in plant science. Although other plants are in use the major part of our activity is still on Arabidopsis. However, we aim to establish other model systems and I will address some questions related to the establishment of Seminavis robusta as a laboratory model system for research on diatoms. Diatoms are unicellular photosynthetic algae present in marine and fresh water down to depths to which radiation can be photosynthetically exploited. Being evolutionary successful with perhaps as many as 200 000 species diatoms are major global contributors to marine primary production and to the biological carbon pump and biogeochemical cycles. Recently, the genomes of two diatoms, Thalassiosira pseudonana and Phaeodactylum tricornutum have been sequenced (Armbrust et al. 2004; Bowler et al. 2008). These two diatoms and other algae are in use in various experiments in our department related to e.g. light acclimation and bioenergy issues. Getting culture start help from professor Wim Vyverman?s group we have set out to establish Seminavis robusta as a laboratory workhorse. Basic techniques for cultivation, extraction of molecules, mating and transformation and imaging are being established. We are also aiming to sequence the Seminavis robusta genome. This work has been started and I will briefly go through the results so far and the reasoning behind the choice of Seminavis as a model system. |