Ralf Reski: "Shedding light on 500 million years of plant evolution: a tribute to Dobzhansky"

Ralf Reski
Chair Plant Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg
Senior Fellow, FRIAS School of Life Sciences - LifeNet

Shedding light on 500 million years of plant evolution: a tribute to Dobzhansky

The moss Physcomitrella patens was developed as a model system for basic biology and for biotechnology. In contrast to the widely used seed plants, moss plants are predominantly haploid and harbour a yeast-like efficient machinery for gene targeting. These features allow precise manipulation of the genome to identify gene functions in a reverse genetics approach. Some recent results will be presented that illustrate the value of an evolutionary view on biology. Ongoing work on integrating different levels of –omics data in a systems biology approach will be presented as well.