Abdellah joined The James Hutton Institute in November 2015 and he is a member of the Cell and Molecular Sciences [2] department. Prior to this he worked at the University of Dundee for 18 years after his first Postdoc at Imperial College, London. He was born and educated in Morocco and gained his master’s degree and PhD from the University of Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France.
Abdellah has 3 decades of experience in Plant Molecular Biology and worked mainly in the areas of cell wall and plant DNA repair and recombination. Over years, he has accumulated huge knowledge of gene manipulation tools including CRISPR-based gene editing. Abdellah loves sharing his knowledge through teaching, collaborations and public outreach.
I joined JHI in November 2015 to work on “meiosis and recombination in large genome crop plants”, funded by a 5-year ERC advanced grant awarded to Prof Robbie Waugh [3]. This project extends my previous work in Prof Claire Halpin’s laboratory [4] on “Meiosis in barley: manipulating crossover frequency and distribution” funded by a BBSRC sLoLa grant.
During meiosis, homologous chromosomes undergo complex and dynamic structural changes resulting in their pairing, synapsis, recombination and segregation. The mechanism that regulates the frequency and distribution of meiotic crossovers (CO) is poorly understood. In grasses, meiotic COs are preferentially formed at sub-telomeric regions resulting in stable linkage blocks in centromic region containing ~30% of genes. This skewed pattern of recombination hampers the breeders’ effort to exploit this important gene pool.
Our aim is to understand the mechanism that governs the formation of meiotic COs in barley and use the gained knowledge to improve crop breeding efficiency. In the current SHUFFLE [5] project, we are using several omics platforms ranging from genomics, transcriptomics to proteomics to study the dynamics of RNA and protein changes during meiosis.
[6]I use molecular biology techniques to study and validate the function of selected genes and Figure 1 summarises my gene manipulation toolbox ranging from RNAi to CRISPR/Cas9 [7].
I am also interested in studying chromatin epigenetics, non-coding RNAs and post-translational modifications during meiosis. However, these targeted analyses necessitate isolation of large numbers of meiocytes that are embedded in complex structures like anthers. In order to solve this problem, I adapted the INTACT [8] technology (isolation of nuclei tagged in specific cell types) that will allow us to quickly harvest large numbers of meiotic nuclei directly from barley inflorescences.
Currently collaborating with:
After my PhD I have worked in two main areas of research:
Links:
[1] https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7628-6741
[2] https://www.hutton.ac.uk/research/departments/cell-and-molecular-sciences
[3] https://www.hutton.ac.uk/staff/robbie-waugh
[4] https://www.lifesci.dundee.ac.uk/people/claire-halpin
[5] https://youtu.be/XyMhyeWMZl4
[6] https://www.hutton.ac.uk/sites/default/files/images/research/gene-manipulation-toolbox2.png
[7] https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/crispr-cas9-hd-final/
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mazTODTkJzg
[9] https://www.ipk-gatersleben.de/en/independent-research-groups/meiose/
[10] https://www.hutton.ac.uk/staff/jennifer-stephens
[11] https://www.spatialresearch.org/research-giacomello-lab/
[12] https://www.scilifelab.se/researchers/joakim-lundeberg/
[13] https://publons.com/researcher/1181842/abdellah-barakate/metrics/