Abstract

Transgenic Barley in Applied Research and Biotechnology

Goetz Hensel, Senior Scientist, Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research

Triticeae cereals belong to the most important crops worldwide. With an increasing number of resources and genomic tools like cDNA libraries, EST databases, TILLING populations and the genomic sequence of barley, many DNA-sequences became available for which a detailed functional analysis is desirable. Therefore, a powerful cereal transformation platform based on the use of Agrobacterium tumefaciens has been deployed in our laboratory. In barley, either immature embryos or immature pollen stimulated to undergo embryogenic development have been routinely used as gene transfer targets. The employment of these methods has resulted in the transformation of various spring and winter type cultivars as well as wild barley. Functional gene analyses and biotechnological approaches further require cell-specific promoters. Due to the limited number in cereals several expression systems were developed. Very recently, tools for targeted genome editing using Transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) were developed. A number of examples will illustrate how genetic engineering of barley can foster resistance mechanisms or how the barley grains can be used for the production of valuable and complex recombinant proteins like antibodies.