Leaf genetic transformation of different maize inbred lines using the GRF-GIF morphogenic genes

• Grant number: 22/01605-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: October 01, 2022
• End date: September 30, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Genetics - Plant Genetics
• Principal Investigator: Paulo Arruda
• Grantee: Letícia Rios Vieira
• Supervisor: Laurens Pauwels
• Host Institution: Centro de Biologia Molecular e Engenharia Genética (CBMEG). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie (VIB), Belgium
• Associated to the scholarship: 20/10677-1 - Genetic transformation of maize mediated by Agrobacterium tumefaciens to obtaining resistance to abiotic stresses, BP.PD

Abstract

Maize (Zea mays) is one of the world's leading cereal crops, and it is a plant model for genetic and biotechnology studies. However, maize genetic transformation faces complex and frequent barriers, such as the recalcitrance of many inbred lines to current protocols employing immature embryos as the starting material. Thus, the main objective of this project is to develop new pro-tocols to enable immature leaf transformation of different maize inbred lines. For this, we will transform immature leaves of ten different maize lines and test their susceptibility to Agrobacte-rium infection through GUS transient expression. After that, we will evaluate the regeneration capacity of transformed calli generated from immature leaves. Next, we will transform the six most susceptible maize lines with vectors harboring the GRF-GIF morphogenic regulators and the CRISPR machinery targeting the VYL gene and evaluate the transformation efficiency as the number of transformed plants. We expect to overcome the recalcitrance to transformation and reduce the time and costs. We believe that developing an alternative method will facilitate maize transformation and open paths for the transformation of other recalcitrant species. (AU)