Research

GENTE_Pop

We have been extremely lucky (!) and the GENTE_Pop project to investigate the causes and consequences of natural transposition has been funded by an ERC Starting Grant !!!

Jumping genes’, also known as transposable elements or transposons, are sequences of DNA that can ‘jump’ from one location on a genome to another. Originally identified in the 1950s by Barbara McClintock, we now know they are found in almost all organisms and make up about 50 % of the human genome. What these jumping genes do, if they do decide to jump, depends largely on where they land. They play an important role in genetic diversity and potential adaptation in response to environmental changes. However, studying natural jumping is difficult. The EU-funded GENTE_Pop project is exploiting the power of numbers. Evaluating large populations of experimental and wild-type plants will enable the analysis of jumping gene movements, elucidating their potential cause (environmental pressures) and effect (heritable changes leading to adaptive variation) (© European Union 2020; CORDIS, cordis.europa.eu).

epiTOM

A collaborative project with Nicolas Bouche (IJPB INRAE) has been recently granted by the Agence National de la Recherche. epiTOM aims at exploiting experimental and natural epigenetic variation for tomato improvement. In particular, we are investigating the extent and molecular pathways underlying tomato epigenetic variation by generating genome-edited mutants impaired in DNA methylation homeostasis.

EpiLinks

A collaborative project with Fredy Barneche (IBENS CNRS), Simon Amiard and Aline Probst (iGReD) has been granted by the Agence National de la Recherche. epiLinks aims to address the physical and functional relationships between three Globular histone H1 (GH1) protein families, how histone 1 (H1) contributes to plants’ capability to accommodate abundant internal Interstitial Telomeric Regions (ITRs), and the biological meaning of GH1 protein interplays in PRC2-mediated transcription regulation and in plant development.