Université de Strasbourg

18th USIAS Fellows Seminar - Accumulation and stabilisation of Provitamin A

November 18, 2015
12:00

USIAS Fellows : Peter Beyer and Philippe Hugueney

Directly or indirectly, all of the vitamin A consumed by humans derives from plants in the form of provitamin A (ß-carotene). Vitamin A deficiency is a major public health problem in developing countries leading to vitamin A deficiency diseases with the consequence of blindness, morbidity and mortality. Therefore, current international projects aim at increasing the provitamin A content in crop plants, this approach also being referred to as biofortification. Frequently, crop plant tissues cannot be improved for this trait by classical breeding because of a lack of trait variability. Rice is an example where genetic modification needed to be employed (Golden Rice) while in maize, for instance, breeding for increased provitamin A carotenoids is feasible.

The teams of Professor Peter Beyer (Albert-Ludwigs Universität Freiburg, ALUF) and Philippe Hugueney (INRA-Université de Strasbourg) have decided to collaborate since each has identified catalytically improved versions of two enzymes acting at known rate-limiting steps in isoprenoid (including carotenoid) biosynthesis. The two teams are proposing a proof-of-concept, which bears the potential of paving the way for future improvement of provitamin A biofortifed crops, applicable to both marker-assisted breeding and genetic modification. At this seminar, Philippe Hugueney and Peter Beyer will present their results.

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