The unit
The Department of Biosciences (DB) at UNIMI, also awarded as ‘Department of Excellence’ by MIUR, includes more than 40 multidisciplinary research groups. DB holds all the facilities for molecular and cell biology, advanced microscopy as well as a dedicated “rice platform” (growth chambers, greenhouse). The team is performing functional studies to uncover the role of key genes in drought and heat stress tolerance in rice. The UNIMI team held in the Department of Biosciences is composed of 1 Associate Professor (Ignacio Ezquer, Unit leader), 2 Post-docs, 1 PhD student, 2 students.
MAIN ACTIVITIES
UNIMI will be involved in the deep characterization of some genes known to be strictly involved in the response to heat and drought stress. UNIMI will help the consortium to identify the orthologous of some key genetic elements that control developmental processes related to heat and drought stress determination both in cereals and dicots and to identify orthologous sequences also focusing on TFs for the genetic engineering of heat and drought- stress tolerance.
Gene-edited mutants and eventually, overexpressing lines will be generated in rice and tomato to investigate their stress adaptation to provide the basis effective engineering strategies leading to greater stress tolerance.
UNIMI and other partners will interact to develop complementary research for metabolome profiling, RNA-seq experiments and characterization of the cell wall of the natural accessions identified or the edited lines generated in the project to speed up the identification process of the major determinants involved in improved resilience to stresses in rice and eggplant
