XVI International Botanical Congess

Isolation of plant genes involved in non homologous recombination is of special interest because gene targeting is not yet a feasible technique in higher plants. An idea to enhance homologous recombination frequencies is, to down regulate the expression of genes which are important factors of illegitimate recombination. For this purpose we isolate and characterize such genes from Arabidopsis thaliana by database homology and transform antisense constructs of the respective cDNAs into plants. The transgenic plants are tested by various recombination assays to elucidate the precise role of each factor in different recombination pathways. Besides learning more about the molecular machinery of recombination, we hope to establish plant lines which will be a versatile tool for successful gene targeting in higher plants.