Glandular Trichomes and Isoprenoid Biosynthesis

This project is funded by the programme Plants of the Future of the German Ministry of Education and Research (2018-2020). This is a collaborative effort of three research groups of the Department of Cell and Metabolic Biology (Jasmonate Function and Mycorrhiza, Synthetic Biology, Glandular Trichomes and Isoprenoid Biosynthesis). The goal of the project is to develop tools to increase the frequency of gene targeting in plants and for the marker-free detection of gene targeting events. As a proof-of-concept, our objective is to generate tomato plants where the promoter of the AN1 gene of tomato has integrated elements from a tomato fruit-specific promoter so that the tomato fruits produce health-beneficial anthocyanins. Although under the current EU-regulatory rules such plants are considered as genetically modified, in a number of countries, including the USA, Israel, Japan and Australia, they would be deregulated.