CPSC Lecture with Professor Ralph Bock

Join the CPSC Lecture with Professor Ralph Bock (Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Potsdam-Golm, Germany) on Friday 17 June, 9:00 – 10:00.

The title of the lecture is: Genes gone wild – Experimental evolution meets synthetic biology.

The link to the meeting is: https://ucph-ku.zoom.us/j/68969271867?pwd=aEwxaXo4WXBEOEFwdFFuT3QvbUpWZz09 (passcode: CPSC)

In his talk, Ralph Bock will describe experimental approaches to study genome evolution in real time. He will discuss three fundamental processes in eukaryotic genome evolution and show how they can be reconstructed in laboratory experiments: (i) the transfer of organellar (plastid and mitochondrial) genes to the nuclear genome, (ii) the horizontal movement of organellar DNA between plants, and (iii) the travel of nuclear genetic material between plants by horizontal genome transfer. He will describe their current knowledge about the underlying mechanisms, and discuss the role of gene and genome transfer events in the generation of natural diversity and in the formation of new species. Finally, he will show how horizontal gene transfer can be employed as a versatile tool in plant biotechnology and synthetic biology