Lat-SOL: the Solanaceae Latin-American network

PERES L.; ROSSI M.; VAN SLUYS M. A.,; GIRALDON, E.; PICARDI L.; VALLE, E.; MASUELLI R.; PERALTA I. E.

Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Congreso; VI Congreso Internacional de Solanáceas, de Genómica de Solanáceas y de la Asociación Americana de Papa “Genomics meets Biodiversity”; 2006

Sociedad Internacional de Solanáceas, Asociación de Genómica de Solanáceas, Asociación Americana de Papa, y la Universidad de Wisconsin, Madison, Estados Unidos

The Lat-Sol initiative is an integrative research network of Latin America laboratories working in basic and applied research with Solanaceae. This family 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 1,500 species. The network aims at: - Join efforts and promote information and resource flow between laboratories working in basic and applied aspects of Solanaceae species. - Coordinate research initiatives for establishing post-genomic technologies. - Integrate Latin American research within the existent SOL, EU-SOL and SOL-Andino programs. Currently the network includes 11 affiliated laboratories with more than 100 people including scientists, breeders, technicians and students and various other associated non-members. Moreover, these institutions work in close collaboration with other out-of-border laboratories around the world. Several member labs are advocated to preserve large collections of Solanaceae and to survey the genetic variation on this germplasm by post-genomic approaches. The retrotransposon abundant universe is being reveled in Solanum wild and cultivated species. 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 boarded using Solanaceae transgenic plants as models. Genomic approaches are being performed to complete the tomato mitochondrial genome sequence. Plant molecular biologists and biochemists board different aspects of fruit metabolism and pollination in tomato. Finally, a Micro-MsK tomato mutant collection has been developed to study hormonal metabolism and in vitro organogenic competence. This newly-formed network is an open initiative for any scientific group pursuing similar objectives aiming novel contributions to the plant science field.