Regulation of gene expression in grapevine: analysis of genetic and epigenetic determinants
Scientific Responsable :Professor Alessandro Vannozzi, DAFNAE | alessandro.vannozzi@unipd.it
Starting dates: 10.07.2019 – 17.09.2023
Project description (English)
The development of genome editing makes it easier to intervene in a targeted manner on genes to either modify their product or their expression pattern. A large fraction of phenotypic variation appears to be determined by regulatory rather than coding variation and understanding how gene expression is controlled becomes a prerequisite for the exploitation of the full potential of editing techniques for the constitution of new varieties. In plants relatively little is known about where regulatory regions reside, where variants affecting gene regulation are located and how the large fraction of the genome explained by transposable elements (TEs) is involved in gene regulation. The scope of the project is to analyze in depth the grapevine genome to search for putative regulatory regions and cis-regulatory variants with a range of wet lab and bioinformatic approaches that will use biochemical, evolutionary and genetic data to look at both genetic and epigenetic factors involved in gene regulation.