Our Competences

Our research competences are in the areas of the production and analysis of transgenic plants as well as the isolation of genes involved in polysaccharide synthesis.

For fundamental questions we study the model species Arabidopsis thaliana, Lotus japonicus and Medicago truncatula. Here we take advantage of mutant collections to apply reverse genetic analysis to assign function to genes. We also genetically transform the recalcitrant crop plants grapevine and sugarcane to do similar studies in these species. For initial phenotyping of genetically transformed sugarcane lines we have established a suspension culture system that allows us to quickly study the effects of our genetic manipulations, which increases the throughput of our program immensely.

For phenotyping of the genetic variability that we isolate we have access to the full toolbox of contemporary functional genomics analysis. We do this mostly in collaboration with the Central Analytical Facility (CAF; http://academic.sun.ac.za/saf/ ) on campus or with the Centre for Proteomics and Genomics Research (CPGR; http://www.cpgr.org.za/ ) that is located on campus of the University of Cape Town within 40 km of our Institute.

For isolation of novel genes encoding enzymes that synthesize, modify or degrade biopolymers we have established unique functional screening systems in Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This also takes advantage of a range of mutants in metabolism, which can either be complemented or which allow a gain of function screen. We have established a range of cDNA libraries from diverse species and metagenomic libraries from unique ecological niches that allow such functional screens. We are also able to screen for affinity to certain substrates using unique plasmid display technology.