Department for Genetics
Director: Dr. Péter Kaló
Both basic and applied research are represented in the scientific program of the Department for Genetics. The highly autonomous scientific groups are the basic units of the Department. The projects of the Department introduce current techniques and latest results of molecular biology, genetics and genomics into agricultural research. The enormously high variability of pathogens represents a very serious challenge for researchers as well as for agriculture, human and animal healthcare. Therefore, most projects of the Department are focusing on the defense mechanisms against pathogens and host-pathogen interactions both in plants and animals. These topics include the study of the interactions between apple-bacteria Erwinia, chicken-bacteria Salmonella, pig-bacteria Ecoli, pepper-bacteria Xanthomonas, pepper-eelworms Meloidogyne, alfalfa-fungi Fusarium, pepper- virus TSWV. In addition, other “beneficial” mechanisms such as the symbiotic interaction between alfalfa-bacteria Sinorhizobium, role of algae in environmental research and the plant RNA quality control system (nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD)) are also investigated.
The Institute's research groups: