Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics Seminar Series
Speaker:
Örjan Carlborg
Dept. of Clinical Sciences, Division of Computational Genetics, SLU, Uppsala,
Title: Understanding the genetic architecture of complex traits
Host: Andrei Chabes, Medchem
Place: KB3A9, Lilla hörsalen
Abstract:
Understanding how genes contribute to the phenotypic variability observed in populations is a major challenge in biology. A common approach to dissect the genetics of complex traits is to measure the genotype of individuals in a population at a large number of loci across the genome and then evaluate whether the phenotypic mean differs between the individuals that carry particular combinations of genetic variants, alleles, at either individual loci (i.e. detection of additive, dominance and epigenetic effects of loci) or at multiple loci (i.e. to detect genetic interactions or epistasis). I will here give a brief introduction to this topic and illustrate the insights that can be gained into the genetics of complex traits using these approaches by using examples from our research in domestic animals. An alternative, and promising, strategy to identify genes involved in gene-by-gene or gene-by-environment interactions is to search for loci that causes a difference in variance (a variance heterogeneity) between genotypes. This talk will be concluded by presenting some recent work to develop theory and tools for genome-wide mapping of individual variance-controlling loci. Empirical findings from studies of data in Arabidopsis thaliana and Saccharomyces cerevisiae will be used to illustrate the contribution of such loci to the genetic architecture of complex traits and the implications of the findings on our understanding of the genetic regulation of complex trait variation.
UPSC Seminar
Speaker:
Dr. Wilfred Vermerris
Department of Microbiology & Cell Science
University of Florida Genetics Institute
Gainesville, FL, USA
Title:
Modifying cell wall composition to enhance the production of biofuels and nanomaterials
Place:
Lilla hörsalen, KB3A9, KBC
Host: Hannele Tuominen
The production of fermentable sugars from lignocellulosic biomass is affected by the chemical composition of the cell wall. Lignin content and subunit composition appear to be of particular importance. We have generated and studied several different classes of cell wall mutants of maize and sorghum to define how variation in lignin composition impacts biomass conversion, to identify the underlying genes, and to explain the biochemical basis of enhanced conversion using fluorescently labeled cellulases. The success of the bio-economy also depends on economic and environmental sustainability. I will highlight how the waste stream of the biorefinery can be used to produce nanomaterials as high-value co-products that have the potential to offset the cost of biofuel production.
UPSC Cutting Edge Seminar
Speaker:
Ralph Bock, Professor and Director
Department of Organelle Biology, Biotechnology and Molecular Ecophysiology
Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology
Potsdam-Golm, Germany
Title:
Genes gone wild: experimental genome evolution in plants
Place: Lilla hörsalen, KB3A9