Evogene succeeded to introduce the two of the most promising pathways into model plants, Arabidopsis thaliana and Brachypodium distachyon. They obtained three independent events expressing all five proteins of Pathwa01 in Arabidopsis plants. Those three positive events and additional events harboring and expressing the partial pathway (used as controls) were all taken for greenhouse assay. The preliminary results of this assay show that the expression of these specific proteins is affecting the biomass production and photosynthetic activity of Arabidopsis plants. Thus, it is suggested that for expression in Arabidopsis the Pathway01 might be optimized, focusing on one of the proteins involved.
As for the second pathway, Pathway02, in both Arabidopsis and Brachypodium species, as well as the Pathway01 in Brachypodium, cloning, transformation, seed propagation and molecular evaluation phases were also completed. Expression evaluations and phenotyping of the most suitable events are expected to be completed during 2020.
