Collaboration to develop gene expression tool to help combat agricultural disease that affects food supply for 60 million people worldwide
Agilent Technologies Europe has announced a collaboration with North Carolina State University (NCSU) to facilitate research of rice blast disease, one of the main pathological threats to food supplies worldwide.
Agilent has obtained rights to use the gene sequences from the NCSU Fungal Genomics Laboratory to develop a new commercial 60-mer oligo microarray, a gene expression analysis tool for agricultural researchers worldwide.
Rice blast (Magnaporthe grisea) is a filamentous fungus that causes rice blast disease, resulting in the loss of enough rice to feed 60 million people each year.
Strains of this disease also attack wheat, barley and turf grasses.
Besides causing significant economic damage, rice blast is a highly characterized organism that serves as a model for scientists studying filamentous fungi that cause other cereal and crop diseases.
The sequencing of the rice blast genome was completed in July 2002.
Research was paid for by a $1.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Agriculture's Microbial Genome Sequencing project.
One of the principle investigators for the Rice Blast Functional Genomics Project was Ralph Dean, professor of plant pathology and director of the Fungal Genomics Laboratory at NCSU.
"The goal of our research is to use the natural host resistance already present in some strains of rice as a defense against the rice blast pathogen," said Professor Dean.
"We believe this new microarray will be of significant interest to the international agricultural community and are pleased to collaborate with Agilent in its development." "These microarrays are being designed to enable researchers to elucidate the molecular basis of plant disease, including the identification of host-pathogen interactions and the molecular pathways involved," said Barney Saunders, general manager and vice president of Agilent BioResearch Solutions unit. "We expect that this will be the first commercially available full-genome Magnaporthe microarray as well as a first of its kind." Availability: Agilent will be formulating a pre-launch interest list for this product.
All interested parties are invited to register for upcoming information about this product by sending an e-mail to dna_microarrays@agilent.com
