The tissue culture and transformation (TTC) has for mission the development of new transformation protocol for apple, grape, and small fruit and produce transgenic lines for functional genomics studies. The TTC group is also focusing is research activity on studding the molecular mechanism activated by the Malus in response to Fire Blight infection (QTL analysis, cloning resistant gene, transcriptomic studies, functional genomics).

The availability of the Vitis vinifera,Malus x domestica and, Fragaria vesca genome open a tremendous challenge to assign function to all predicted genes in the genome, not only because of the large number of genes to be examined, but also because defining what constitutes a gene is itself a complexes problem. Strategies have been developed in apple, grape and strawberry to validate gene function, they are based on the over-expression or the silencing of a candidate gene. However, progress is still needed in order to adapt techniques to a larger range of varieties and rootstocks, and to develop selection techniques which avoid the need for antibiotic resistance. As part of the tissue culture and transformation group, we will study the interaction between apple and Fire blight and other disease, and also we will optimize and refine new transformation technology that will allow us remain at the cutting edge of plant biotechnology, such as biolistic methods (gene gun technology), transient expression via agroinfiltration or use of virus (VIGS), develop clean gene technologies procedure to allow the production of marker free plants, develop an accelerating breeding apple line which can allow researcher to study in a shorter time genes related with fruit and flower development and try to provide methodologies that are free of Intellectual Property contains.