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Prof. Gelvin delivers McCoy Distinguished Lecture

Monday, November 29, 2004
FOWLER HALL
3:30 p.m.

Stanton B. Gelvin
Professor
Department of Biological Sciences

Will Speak on:
“The Molecular Mechanism of Plant Genetic Transformation by Agrobacterium tumefaciens, Nature’s Genetic Engineer”

Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a soil bacterium that causes the neoplastic disease Crown Gall on hundreds of plant species. During the course of infection, a small region of a resident plasmid, termed the T- (transferred-) DNA, is transferred from the bacterium to the plant. Once in the plant cell, the T-DNA traverses the cytoplasm, enters the nucleus, and integrates into the plant genome. Approximately 20 years ago, scientists learned how to “tame” Agrobacterium for use as a genetic engineering organism for plants and, more recently, fungi and human cells. By deleting the oncogenes from the T-DNA, they “disarmed” the bacterium so that it would no longer produce tumors. Although Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation has provided a mainstay for plant biotechnology and plant molecular studies, many agriculturally important plant species remain highly recalcitrant to this method of transformation. In an attempt to improve the utility of Agrobacterium as a genetic engineering tool, our laboratory has sought to understand the role of host genes in transformation. In this lecture, I shall present an overview of what we have learned about the host contributions to the transformation process. This knowledge will likely be applicable to human and animal pathogenesis.

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