With the project ‘Decoding gene regulation and plant resilience using genomic sequence models: prediction and interpretation of variant effects in Brachypodium (GRASP)’, Guillaume Ramstein is among the 21 researchers who received a grant under the Green Research theme. The Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF) received a total of 415 applications for the theme call.

The question ’How can we contribute to the green transition?’ is pivotal in Guillaume Ramstein’s project. Plant production of the future needs more efficient and robust crops with less environmental footprint. With climate changes, warmer weather, drought and other extreme weather events, crops to feed humans and animals need to be more resilient. However, robustness is a genetic trait which is difficult to improve, as it is typically caused by interactions among many DNA variants. Current methods for improvement of traits in plants are limited, so Guillaume Ramstein’s project proposes to develop genomic models by means of artificial intelligence (AI) to predict gene activity based on the DNA sequence. These models will be used to identify genetic differences between different genotypes with the purpose of mapping regulatory processes.

To test the models, the project will focus on heat stress in Brachypodium distachyon, a model plant closely related to barley and wheat, which are both important in world food production. The GRASP project will give new insights into the genetic control of gene regulation and develop new AI-based methods to predict the significance of genetic variants for plant robustness.

‘- I’m happy and grateful to receive this prestigious grant,’ says Guillaume Ramstein and elaborates: ‘The DFF Green Research grant will be critical for consolidating QGG’s leadership in variant effect prediction, which has been one of fastest growing fields in genomics thanks to the rapid development of AI techniques. The GRASP project will establish an international network among leading experts in regulatory genomics (Prof. Peter Koo, Cold Spring Harbor Lab, USA), Brachypodium genetics (Dr. Anne Roulin, Agroscope, Switzerland) and plant physiology (Prof. Birte Boelt, department of Agroecology at Aarhus University). I’m very excited to develop cutting-edge techniques for variant effect prediction in collaboration with these experts, while addressing fundamental questions about the genetics of stress tolerance in plants.’

Read the press release from Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF) here (in Danish)

For further information, please contact: Tenure track assistant professor Guillaume Ramstein