In silico design and functional assessment of semisynthetic genes that confer tolerance to phosphinothricin

• Main Authors: Jenny Paola Jiménez, Alejandro Chaparro Giraldo
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universidad Nacional de Colombia 2016-07-01
• Series: Revista Colombiana de Biotecnología
• Subjects: cultivos GM; libertad de operación; tolerancia a herbicidas; uso codónico.
• Online Access: https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/biotecnologia/article/view/52206

Herbicide tolerance is one of the features most used in GM crops, which has shown positive results for farmers and the environment. The starting point is the development of expression cassettes that express the characteristic of interest, they are initially constructed by standard molecular biology techniques. Currently, by bioinformatics and synthetic biology tools, it is possible to design and test the construct in silico, and then hire their synthesis. This approach allows optimizing expression by modifying the codon usage. In this work there were designed and evaluated semi-synthetic versions of genes in Nicotiana benthamiana, these genes confer tolerance to the herbicide phosphinothricin. It was made an analysis of freedom to operate in order to ensure that the designed constructs not violate intellectual property in Colombia. There were obtained two expression cassettes with freedom to operate, which express versions of the bar gene.