News › International Cereal VIGS Workshop

Virus-Induced Gene Silencing schematic

18 February 2011

The event will be held 22-24 June, 2011

The recent site re-development programme, funded by the BBSRC and the Lawes Agricultural Trust, has provided a new state of the art biological containment facility comprising two laboratories and four plant walk-in growth rooms designed to enable work with GM plants, GM plant pathogens and experiments with GM viruses such as those used for Virus-Induced Gene Silencing (VIGS) in vegetative and flowering small grain cereals.

VIGS has recently emerged as a powerful research tool for the functional assessment of cereal genes which play key roles in important sustainability traits. In particular, VIGS has so far proven to be extremely useful for assessing leaf-expressed genes controlling resistance to various pests and diseases. With food security becoming one of the key strategic research priorities globally and with the recent deluge of available sequence information for genomes and transcriptomes of wheat and other cereal crops and Brachypodium, the importance of VIGS in conjunction with other currently available reverse genetic tools such as stable cereal transformation-based RNAi and TILLING cannot be underestimated. Further developments and optimisation of VIGS tools should permit the identification of cereal genes expressed in leaves, stem, roots and the floral tissues that contribute to sustainability traits which include enhanced yield, improved nutritional and processing quality of the grain, grain safety, improved water use efficiency and nutrient use efficiency, resistance to lodging, and resistance to multiple pathogens.

With these new research challenges and the global food security priorities in mind, this Workshop will bring together the international VIGS experts, the RRes Wheat Pathogenomics Team (WPT) members, as well as other UK cereal scientists from RRes and other BBSRC Institutes and Universities who are interested in applying this new technology in their research onto various sustainability traits.

This Workshop is an opportunity to:
› learn the newest developments and the best practice available on cereal VIGS from the international experts
› promote the use of the new biological containment level 3 facility at RRes
› engage key UK plant science research groups with the cereal VIGS technology
› discuss future joint projects / collaboration ideas with international VIGS experts and with cereals researchers whose projects may benefit from using VIGS

The Workshop will be addressing the following scientific objectives:
› Barley stripe mosaic virus (BSMV) mediated VIGS in cereals: State of the art
› The use of other vectors for VIGS in wheat, barley, rice and Brachypodium species
› Recent technological developments including what works and what does not work
› Biological problems, ideas and traits that could be addressed using VIGS
› Licensing, biological containment requirements, other regulations for VIGS in the UK and other countries
› Journal requirements for publishing VIGS work and for new grant applications
› Alternatives to VIGS and complementary approaches e.g. stable RNAi transformation, homologous recombination, TILLING

The Workshop is being organised by Dr Steve Scofield (Purdue University, USA) who is regarded as the leader in cereal VIGS, and three members of WPT at RRes namely Drs Kostya Kanyuka, Wing Sham Lee and Prof Kim Hammond-Kosack.

The Workshop is sponsored by the BBSRC (International Partnering Award) and provides accommodation (up to 2 nights) and food, but participants are expected to cover their own travel expenses.

This Workshop will be intentionally small (up to 35 participants) and, to ensure a balanced representation of backgrounds and expertise, most participation is by invitation only. However, a limited number of places are open to application. To apply, please email Kostya Kanyuka - kostya.kanyuka@bbsrc.ac.uk - by March 7th 2011 the following information: name, institution, your career stage, your research background, plus the reasons why you wish to attend.

Contacts

› Kostya Kanyuka, Kim Hammond-Kosack and Sam Lee

Rothamsted Research Press Office

For further information, please contact Darren Hughes, Head of Communications, on +44 (0) 1582 763 133 ext 2673, email darren.hughes@rothamsted.ac.uk

Rothamsted is the longest running agricultural research station in the world, providing cutting-edge science and innovation for nearly 170 years. Our mission is to deliver the knowledge and new practices to increase crop productivity and quality and to develop environmentally sustainable solutions for food and energy production. Our strength lies in our integrated, multidisciplinary approach to research in plant and soil science.

Rothamsted Research receives strategic funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) . It is the longest running agricultural research station in the world, developing environmentally sustainable solutions for food and energy production through science and innovation for nearly 170 years.

About BBSRC

BBSRC is the UK funding agency for research in the life sciences and the largest single public funder of agriculture and food-related research.

Sponsored by Government, BBSRC's budget for 2011-12 is around £445M which it is investing in a wide range of research that makes a significant contribution to the quality of life in the UK and beyond and supports a number of important industrial stakeholders, including the agriculture, food, chemical, healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors.

BBSRC provides institute strategic research grants to the following:

The Babraham Institute, Institute for Animal Health, Institute for Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (Aberystwyth University), Institute of Food Research, John Innes Centre, The Genome Analysis Centre, The Roslin Institute (University of Edinburgh) and Rothamsted Research.

The Institutes conduct long-term, mission-oriented research using specialist facilities. They have strong interactions with industry, Government departments and other end-users of their research.

For more information see: www.bbsrc.ac.uk