Lat-SOL: the Solanaceae Latin-American network

LAZARO PEREZ1, MAGDALENA ROSSI2, MARIE ANNE VAN SLUYS2, ELSA GILARDON3, LILIANA PICARDI4, ESTELA VALLE5, RICARDO MASUELLI6, IRIS PERALTA6, GABRIELA GRIGIONI7, SEBASTIAN ASURMENDI8, CECILIA VAZQUEZ-ROVERE8, FERNANDO CARRARI8, JORGE MUSCHIETTI

Monona Terrace - Madison, Wisconsin - USA

Congreso; PAA / Solanacea 2006 - Genomics Meets Biodiversity; 2006

The International Sol Genomics Project

The Lat-Sol initiative is an international and integrative research network of Latin America laboratories working in basic and applied aspects of the plant science field with Solanaceaes species. Solanaceae is well represented in South America with the greatest diversity in the western areas, and many groups are restricted to temperate parts of the continent. Many genera and species extend from South America into Central America and southern Mexico. Solanum is one of the largest and most widespread of flowering plant genera with more than 1,000 species. The network aims at: - Joining efforts and promoting information and resource flows between labs working in basic and applied aspects of Solanaceae species. - Coordinating research initiatives for establishing postgenomic technologies. - Integrating Latin American research within the existent SOL and EU-SOL programs. Currently the network includes 11 affiliated labs with more than 100 persons including scientists, technicians and students and various other associated non-members. Moreover, these institutions are working in close collaboration with other out-of-borders laboratories around the world. Several member labs are advocated to preserve large collections of native Solanaceae plant germplasm at public Institutions of the region. Plant molecular biologists and biochemists board different aspects of fruit metabolism and auto incompatibility in tomato. An important group of resources are also dedicated to tomato, potato and pepper breeding focusing on agronomical and industrial traits. Plant-pathogen interaction studies are also boarded using Solanaceaes transgenic plants as model. Genomic approaches are being performed to complete the tomato mitochondrial genome sequence and to discovery the genetic variation present in wild tomato species related to fruit metabolism.  This newly-formed network is an open initiative for any scientific group pursuing similar objectives aiming novel contributions to the plant science field.