The aim of this EMBO Workshop is to bring together the scientific community working with plants on subjects around genome stability and modification, including DNA recombination and repair, chromosome stability, meiosis, replication, epigenetics and applications in plant breeding and genome engineering.
In a world faced with increasing populations and climatic change, the importance of understanding the fundamental processes used by plants to maintain and repair their genomes is of ever-increasing importance and urgency. Much of the DNA damage response occurs in the context of chromatin whose nature has a decisive role in the repair process. Both DNA damage response and epigenetics underlie «classical» plant breeding and the development of novel technologies for crop improvement. Increasing fundamental knowledge on the mechanisms of DNA damage responses will inspire development of novel biotechnological approaches and foster their implementation to plant breeding.
