INCT PlantStress Biotech research highlighted at a student meeting

The research carried out at the INCT PlantStress Biotech was highlighted during the XXVII Student Talent Meeting, held at Embrapa Recursos Genéticos e Biotecnologia (Cenargen), in Brasília, between August 28 and 30. Sara Vitorino da Rocha Lemes and Bruna Medeiros Pereira received the award for best work in the Biotechnology category, at undergraduate and postgraduate level, respectively.

Sara Rocha is an undergraduate student in Biotechnology at the University of Brasilia (UnB) and a Scientific Initiation scholarship holder under the PIBIC/CNPq/Embrapa program, supervised by the researchers Carolina Morgante and Fatima Grossi de Sá. In her work, “Genetically modified cotton plants with reduced susceptibility to root knot nematodes and drought”, Sara presented the combined strategy of overexpressing a drought tolerance gene and silencing a vital gene of the nematode Meloidogyne incognita, using RNA interference technology, to obtain plants that are less susceptible to these two stresses, simultaneously.

Bruna Medeiros, who holds a master's degree in Agronomy from UnB and is a DTI-B/CNPq scholarship holder at Embrapa Cenargen, presented the work “A trans-species approach for in-root functional validation and selection of candidate genes for resistance to phytopathogens in legumes”. Supervised by the researchers Ana Brasileiro and Patrícia Guimarães, Bruna highlighted the promising results of a system for rapid functional validation of resistance genes in the roots of soybean, peanut, chickpea, common bean, cowpea, guandu, and alfalfa. More details on this research can be found in the recent publications in the journals PlosOne and Planta and in the patent filed by the team.

Bruna Medeiros and Luanna Pinheiro receiving their awards from members of the organizing committee.

At the same event, the students Nayara Sabrina de Freitas Alves, a doctoral student at the Federal University of Paraná, received an honorable mention for her work “Transcriptional and translational modulation via CRISPR-Cas for soybean tolerance root knot nematodes” and Luanna Pinheiro A. F. Bezerra, a doctoral student at the Catholic University of Brasília, for her work “Soybean plants tolerant to water deficit through modulation of the stress-induced programmed cell death control pathway using CRISPR/dCas9”. The two students are supervised by the researcher Fatima Grossi de Sá.

The XXVII Student Talent Meeting had 150 registered participants, including undergraduate, postgraduate, and post-doctoral students. Its objectives were to publicize the work carried out at Embrapa Cenargen, in the thematic areas of Biotechnology, Biological Control, Quarantine and Genetic Resources, and to provide scientific incentives for young students and scholarship holders.

Text: Carolina Morgante