Marie Mirouze

Institut de Recherche pour le Développement IRD-UMR232

Laboratory of Plant Genome and Development, University of Perpignan, France

Abstract:

Transposable elements (TEs) are major components of eukaryotic genomes. Long considered as parasitic elements, they are now recognized as important drivers of genome evolution. The vast majority of them is controlled by epigenetic factors and thus kept silent. Moreover most TE families are ancient and have accumulated mutations that prevent their movement and/or expression. The repertoire of the potentially mobile TEs or mobilome, representing the elements susceptible to affect genome stability, is difficult to identify as the transcriptome does not reflect the mobilome.

Our project aims at answering the following questions: What is the fraction of crop genomes that is actively transposing? What are the consequences of TE neo-insertions on the plant phenotype and on the epigenetic regulation of the host genome? How is the host exerting its control on the extrachromosomal fraction of TEs?

I will present the tools we are currently developing in Arabidopsis and in crops to track TEs as they move in order to better characterise plant mobilomes and their epigenetic control.

This work is funded by the IRD and the French National Agency for Research (ANR-13-JSV6-0002, EXTRACHROM).

Hosted by Magnus Nordborg