Agricultural Applications for Engineering Species-Like Barriers to Sexual Reproduction
Date
* Thursday 8 MARCH *
Time
| Location | Local Time | Time Zone |
| Canberra (Australia – Australian Capital Territory) | 09:00 am | AEDT |
Venues
CSIRO: Black Mountain – Discovery Theatre
Speaker
Dr Maciej Maselko, University of Minnesota
Synopsis
Advances in plant synthetic biology promise to introduce novel agricultural products in the near future. Challenges to food safety and the environment will arise as plants whose traditional use has been for human consumption are engineered to produce plant-made pharmaceuticals or industrial compounds. Additional mechanisms are needed to allow for the growth of these emerging agricultural sectors without jeopardizing public or environmental health.
I will discuss my work developing Synthetic Genetic Incompatibility (SGI). SGI utilizes recent advances in genome editing and transcriptional programming to engineer species-like barriers in sexually reproducing organisms. “Synthetic Species” are identical to their non-engineered counterparts in terms of growth and reproduction but are genetically incompatible with them. Agricultural applications include preventing unwanted transgene flow which may enable large scale cultivation of crops engineered to make high-value compounds and the use of herbicide resistance in crops with closely related weeds. Applying SGI to insects may also provide a new method for the genetic biocontrol of pests. Results from proof of principle experiments will be presented.
Bio
Maciej Maselko is a synthetic biology postdoc in Mike Smanksi’s lab at the University Minnesota. Maciej’s research interests are developing methods for transgene biocontainment, engineering organisms to perform novel ecosystem services, and the genetic biocontrol of pest species. He received his BS in Biological Sciences at the University of Alaska, Anchorage followed by a PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology from Oregon State University.