Jacob Lab Published in Nature Plants

Plant transformation in the lab and in our crops rely on Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a soil-dwelling bacteria that has evolved the ability to transfer DNA into plant genomes. DNA from Agrobacterium can integrate plant genomes as a single copy or in complex concatenated forms, with consequences for the expression of transgenes providing important traits in agriculture. In this new study, we unraveled some of the mechanisms inside the bacterium and in plants that regulate DNA copy number during the process of transformation. We also show that regulating DNA copy number during Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation can have useful applications in plant genome engineering.