Links to Sponsors: mentioned upon agreement 2nd Announcement September 21th, 2007
Dear Colleague,
On behalf of the Organizing Committee it is my pleasure to invite you to the “Meeting on Epigenetics and Somaclonal Variation”, organised by the Belgian Plant Biotechnology Association, formerly the Belgian Plant and Tissue Culture Group.
The symposium covers different fundamental and applied aspects of epigenetics and somaclonal variation in plants. It will be held in the brand new Parc Créalys, Espace Vincotte (Les Isnes, Gembloux), the 23th of November 2007.
You are warmly invited to participate on this forum, which will include lectures of invited speakers, a poster session and two oral presentations of young scientists, selected from the abstracts submitted for the poster session. Additionally, participants will have the opportunity to visit some Biotech companies located at Parc Créalys.
We are most delighted to announce the preliminary program with renowned speakers in the field.
Participants are invited to submit abstracts for posters.
Both abstracts on new research topics or topics already presented elsewhere, are accepted. The deadline for submission of abstracts is the 15th of Octobre.
The registration fee of 20 Euros
includes attendance at the scientific sessions, coffee breaks and sandwich lunch. Students and members of the NVPW pay 10 Euros. Due to space limitations, the number of participants will be limited to 100 !
Hoping very much this sounds attractive to you all, we leave you with this information for now. The second announcement with the final program will be sent towards the beginning of September. Please feel free to forward this announcement to your collaborators or to anyone you think might be interested in the meeting.
Until later with best regards!
Stefaan Werbrouck, President BPBA
Epigenetics and somaclonal variation
Epigenetics describes heritable alterations in gene expression, which deviate from the Mendelian segregation model and involve DNA methylation, chromatin remodeling, histone modification and a large array of RNA molecules. It has become a popular and fast evolving research topic in plant biology. The importance of epigenetic systems for agriculture and horticulture is on the increase because it has an impact on plant developmental programs and interferes with a plant's response to environmental changes. The ability of a plant to transmit physiological adaptations through mitosis as well as meiosis has great potential for future applications such as gene silencing, somaclonal variation and ploïdy breeding.
This meeting will cover a number of theoretical and applied aspects of plant epigenetics and should yield interesting insights for scientists active in plant genetics, evolution, taxonomy, physiology, breeding, tissue culture and biotechnology. Five international renown scientist will present their work in this tantalizing research field.
Epigenetics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Epigenetics is a term in biology used today to refer to features of unicellular and multicellular organisms (eg. chromatin and DNA modifications) that are stable over rounds of cell division but do not involve changes in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism.[1] These epigenetic changes play a role in the process of cellular differentiation, allowing cells to stably maintain different characteristics despite containing the same genomic material. Epigenetic features are inherited when cells divide despite a lack of change in the DNA sequence itself and, although most of these features are considered dynamic over the course of development in multicellular organisms, some epigenetic features show transgenerational inheritance and are inherited from one generation to the next.[2]
Specific epigenetic processes of interest include paramutation, bookmarking, imprinting, gene silencing, X chromosome inactivation, position effect, reprogramming, transvection, maternal effects, the progress of carcinogenesis, many effects of teratogens, regulation of histone modifications and heterochromatin, and technical limitations affecting parthenogenesis and cloning.
Somaclonal variation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Somaclonal variation It is the term used to describe the variation seen in plants that have been produced by plant tissue culture. Chromosomal rearrangements are an important source of this variation.
Somaclonal variation is not restricted to, but is particularly common in plants regenerated from callus. The variations can be genotypic or phenotypic, which in the later case can be either genetic or epigenetic in origin. Typical genetic alterations are: changes in chromosome numbers (polyploidy and aneuploidy), chromosome structure (translocations, deletions, insertions and duplications) and DNA sequence (base mutations). Typical epigenetic related events are: gene amplification and gene methylation.
If no visual, morphogenic changes are apparent, other plant screening procedures must be applied. There are both benefits and disadvantages to somaclonal variation. The phenomenon of high variability in individuals from plant cell cultures or adventitious shoots has been named somaclonal variation.
Benefits
The major likely benefit of somaclonal variation is in plant improvement. Somaclonal variation leads to the creation of additional genetic variability. Characteristics for which somaclonal mutants can be enriched during in vitro culture include resistance to disease pathotoxins, herbicides and tolerance to environmental or chemical stress, as well as for increased production of secondary metabolites. Disadvantages A serious disadvantage of somaclonal variation occurs in operations which require clonal uniformity, as in the horticulture and forestry industries where tissue culture is employed for rapid propagation of elite genotypes. Ways of reducing somaclonal variation: Different steps can be taken to avoid somaclonal variation. It is well known that increasing numbers of subculture increases the likelihood of somaclonal variation, so the number of subcultures in micropropagation protocols should be kept to a minimum. Regular reinitiation of clones from new explants might reduce variability over time. Another way of reducing somaclonal variation is to avoid 2,4-D in the culture medium, as this hormone is known to introduce variation.
