CBN-V Video Archives - PS3-03
Applying DNA Microarrays for Agricultural Gene Discovery

Tong Zhu

Torrey Mesa Research Institute, Syngenta Research and Technology, 3115 Merryfield Row, San Diego, CA 92121, USA tong.zhu@syngenta.com

Recently, genomic sequence information from various organisms became available. These organisms include not only model systems, but also some economical important species, such as crops and plant pathogens. With the aids from genomics, the focus of post-genome era will be to use a more systematic approach to accelerate gene discovery by associating phenotype with gene expression information in a high throughput manner. DNA microarray has become a major technology platform for such purposes. We designed and used DNA microarray to identify genes involved in variety of traits, including yield, nutrition composition, disease resistance and abiotic stress tolerance in different crop species. The principles of the microarray technology and its potential applications in non-model plants such as cassava, will be discussed.