Plant Biotechnology

Volledige vakbeschrijving

The course builds on the biotechnological knowledge obtained in year 1, some principles introduced in elective courses such as Plants and Microbes and Genetics and Cell Biology and the technological background acquired in Gene Technology. This course starts with a thorough introduction into plant disease resistance. You learn to understand the difference between pre-formed disease resistance and pathogen-induced responses; you are able to describe the difference between diseases resistance, tolerance and susceptibility and their genetic basis (R genes and R proteins); you learn what type of defence-activating compounds are produced by the plant. You are introduced to plant biotechnology on genetically-modified organisms (GMO). In this way, you get familiar with trans-genesis approaches such as the expression of genes from microbes to induce plant resistance to insects or the expression of resistance genes from other plant species to obtain microbial resistance in the host plant. In addition, other techniques such as cis-genesis (expression of genes of the same species modify endogenous processes) and targeted mutagenesis are introduced.