Prof. Avraham Levy's Lab
About
Our research deals with the analysis of the mechanisms that affect genome evolution and that contribute to the biodiversity of the Plant kingdom. This includes DNA repair, DNA recombination, transposons, and polyploidy as well as the analysis of wild wheat populations.
Partner's Genome Editing vision
We are interested in Genome editing to better understand the mechanism of DNA double stranded break (DSB) repair. We are studying the time course and kinetics of DSB formation and repair by the different mechanisms of non-homologous end-joining. We are also interested to understand how a DSB can be repaired using an homologous template, either from an homologous chromosome (leading to targeted crossover or gene conversion) or from a single stranded oligo delivered in plant cells at a site of DSB induction. One of our goals is to better understand what determines DSB repair efficiency – including target transcription and epigenetic modifications.
Partner's activity within the consortium
We are testing the efficiency of DSB repair by end-joining in tomato protoplasts for ~360 gRNAs that include targets located in promoters, exons and introns. In addition we are testing the efficiency of gene targeting using ssODN as donor DNA for targets where DSBs have been induced
