Private
C o m m i t m e n t
Leads to Public Good
Molecular geneticist Marilyn Warburton arrived at CIMMYT in 1998 with a goal: to develop large-scale methods for fingerprinting wheat and maize (see "What Is Genetic Fingerprinting?"). Forty years before that, Hermann Eiselen arrived at what was to be his lifelong mission—a commitment to fighting hunger through research. Their paths crossed through a CIMMYT project on the genetic characterization of wheat.
Large-Scale Genetic Fingerprinting
Becomes a Reality
Warburton and David Hoisington, director of CIMMYT's Applied Biotechnology Center (ABC), had several reasons for wanting to conduct large-scale fingerprinting of wheat and maize at CIMMYT. This capability would give researchers new insight into the parentage of thousands of lines, varieties, and landraces used in their work. They would have a new clue as to whether the desirable genes they sought were present. They could incorporate those genes more quickly into new varieties and could ensure that new varieties were genetically diverse. Fingerprinting would also help genebank curators collect and maintain genetic resources more efficiently.
The ABC could screen a few dozen varieties a month. The goal was to screen hundreds. "Given the size of our seed collections," says Warburton, "people were not interested in fingerprinting only a few varieties. We needed to develop high throughput capabilities to respond to CIMMYT's needs."
Funding was quickly procured to develop protocols for maize, mainly from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), the French Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), and PROMAIS (a consortium of private French companies). Support for similar work in wheat was less forthcoming.
Enter Hermann Eiselen, whose family has supported research at the University of Hohenheim, Germany, over the last four decades. Most of this philanthropy has been directed to students interested in applying science to international development, particularly in agricultural sciences and nutrition. Twenty years ago, the family handed these tasks over to the Eiselen Foundation, where Hermann is Chairman of the Board.
Finding the Funding
Through University of Hohenheim professor Albrecht Melchinger, Eiselen learned about CIMMYT's situation and pursued support through GTZ and his own foundation. Eiselen's interest in the wheat project may have been piqued by the fact that his family's fortune came from products for the bread making industry (his affection for bread and baking is evidenced by his family's founding of the Bread Museum in Stuttgart, Germany).
"Biotechnology is one of the key sciences for increasing agricultural production to help alleviate world hunger," says Eiselen. "On my initiative, the German government entered into the first and, to my knowledge, only public-private partnership by the nation in development-oriented agricultural science, this joint project between CIMMYT and the Institute for Plant Breeding in Hohenheim. I am proud that my foundation is one of the few private institutions in Europe dealing with world food security by fostering scientific research, and it is my great desire that other nonprofit organizations do the same."
Capable Hands to Launch a New Project
The three-year project was launched in 2000. Susanne Dreissigacker and Pingzhi Zhang, PhD students at Hohenheim, arrived at CIMMYT to start developing a high throughput fingerprinting method for wheat. It was a daunting task.
"First, we had to identify markers that would allow us to cover the whole genome," Warburton says. "We wanted at least two markers per chromosome arm for each of wheat's 21 chromosomes." Further complicating the job was the fact that the wheat "genome" actually falls into three similar but not identical genomes, meaning that the markers had to be specific to each genome.
"The students and I ran through more than 200 SSR markers. We wound up with nearly 84, the requisite number, though we still had only one marker for a few chromosome arms." The task was complicated by the dearth of good markers in the public domain. Negotiations with Dupont freed some more effective markers that will be publicly available at the end of the year.
The next step was to identify markers that could be run in the same gel. (If the various markers registered in the same place on the gel, it would be difficult to distinguish one from another.) Finally, software had to be adapted to "score" the markers, which would tell the scientists what gene sequences were present in the tested variety or line.
With the markers selected and the protocols in place, Warburton and the students analyzed hundreds of wheat lines. They looked at important CIMMYT wheats to determine whether genetic diversity was increasing or declining over time. Compared to the 1970s, present-day wheats carry more genetic diversity, indicating that breeders are using new sources of variation and that there is no imminent threat of diminished diversity. Much useful information was obtained, but the biggest impact so far has been on landrace collection and genebank storage strategies (see "Fingerprinting Yields Surprising Findings,").
Last June, the students returned to Hohenheim to complete their analyses and write their theses. "It's a little sad to lose them and their very capable hands," reflects Warburton, "because now that we've got all the data, the exciting stuff starts. Our relationship evolved from a mentoring situation to a team relationship during those two years. By the end of the second year, they were teaching me a lot and probably knew the sequencer better than anybody in the lab."
Hermann Eiselen could not have hoped for more.
For more information:
Marilyn Warburton
(m.warburton@cgiar.org)
August, 2004