PARADIGM: Pararetroviruses : disease, integration and genomes

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 02.0261

Key words (English)

Biotechnology; Environmental Protection; Innovation; Technology Transfer; Life Sciences; Medicine; Health; Waste Management

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: QLK3-CT-2002-02098

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 5. Frame Research Programme - 1.1.3 The 'cell factory'

Short description (English)

See abstract

Abstract (English)

Following the recent discovery that many plant genomes harbour endogenous pararetrovirus (EPRV) sequences, the PARADIGM proposal aims at:
i) investigating the biodiversrty and evolutionary status of EPRVs in crops of economic importance to European agriculture;
ii) screening such economically important crops for possibly deleterious EPRVs;
iii) evaluating the risks of EPRVs for ongoing and future breeding programs, mass production of vegetatively propagated plants and germplasm conservation;
iv)determining the mechanisms of integration, activation, excision and expression of EPRVs leading to infectious episomal viral genomes;
v) defining the effect of EPRVs on the stability and dynamics of plant genomes and;
vi)characterising mechanisms, such as gene silencing, developed by plants to control EPRVs and strategies developed by PRVs to suppress such controls.

These projects will ultimately lead to the development of new risk assessment and control strategies for EPRVs, and to the implementation of such strategies through industrial partnerships with European plant biotechnology and plant breeding small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 02.0261