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Gastautor 14
Figure 1. Organization chart of Génoplante. The
GIS Génoplante research includes a «Strategic committee»
(president: Marion Guillou, director general
of INRA; vice-presidents: Julien Verlay, director of Bioscience
Bayer CropScience and Pierre Pagesse, president
of the strategic committee of Biogemma), an
«Operational management» (president: Georges
Pelletier, research director at INRA; vice-president:
Georges Freyssinet, president of the management
committee of RhoBio), and ten «Thematic committees»
(Generics: Arabidopsis, Rice, New tools, Bioinformatics,
Important targets; Crops: Wheat, Corn,
Rapeseed, Sunflower, Pea), each being headed and
animated by two leader scientists, one from the public
sector, the other from the private sector. The Strategic
committee is assisted by a «Scientific advisory
board» (president: Francesco Salamini) and the «Operational
management» is assisted by a group of national
and external Experts to judge for the quality of
the proposed projects. The «Industrial property
council» advises Génoplante members about possible
protection of research results.
The SAS «Génoplante-Valor» (president of the Board
of directors: Charles Brette, director general of ITCF;
vice-president: Gérard Jacquin, director of information
systems INRA; director: Pierre Malvoisin) is composed
of a team of about ten people in charge of legal and
financial matters, and patenting.
plante, Aventis (now Bayer) CropScience]. Génoplante
programs are carried out and evaluated
within a Scientific Interest Group (Groupement
d’interêt scientifique, GIS: a French-specific legal
entity for a science partnership; Figure 1).This GIS
constitutes the unique pilot structure for all research
programs, in which public and private representatives
play equal roles in decision making, at
all levels of the organization. This principle is
observed and applied not only to the decisionmaking
authorities, but also to the teams responsible
for conducting and coordinating the research
programs.
In order to enhance the influence of French research
and the economic value of the work being
carried out, Génoplante takes care to maintain an
optimum balance between rapid dissemination of
knowledge to meet public concerns and the protection
of research results. Development, protection
and the value of a strong industrial property
of Génoplante’s results constitute a major objective
for each of the partners. To this end, a Limited
Share Company (in French: Société par actions
simplifiée, SAS) namely the SAS Génoplante-Valor
was created in autumn 2001 by members of
Génoplante in order to manage the intellectual
property generated by the research projects.
Génoplante is based on two main programs. The
first one, «Génoplante Generics», is primarily
devoted to the functional analysis of model plant
genomes (Arabidopsis, rice), to the development
of the tools of plant genomics (transcriptomics,
proteomics, metabolomics, bioinformatics, producing
mutant lines) and to the positional cloning of
genes playing important agronomic role in species
that do not justify the creation of a large
genomic project (Thematic committee: «Important
targets in cultivated plant genomes») (Figure
1). In total, 51 projects have been conducted
during «Génoplante Generics» phase 1 (1999-
2001) and 56 other projects are being conducted
within a subsequent phase 2 (2002-2004). Two
new laboratories have been set up at the Evry
«Génopôle»: the RhoBio laboratory (joint venture
between Biogemma and Bayer CropScience) 16 ,
and a joint INRA-CNRS plant genomics laboratory
(URGV: plant genomics research unit) 17 . Importantly,
despite several major difficulties, the URGV
INRA/CNRS laboratory is at present able to produce
about five hundred 10K-Arabidopis DNA
chips per year at a very competitive price, which
will concretely launch and definitively help spreading
plant genomics in France. The second one,
«Génoplante Crops», aims to develop genomics
on five major crops in France and Europe: corn,
wheat, oilseed rape, pea, and sunflower (Figure
1). Different Génoplante partner laboratories,
based throughout France, are working along four
lines of research: structural analysis of plant genomes
(generic positional cloning programs, construction
of physical maps, BAC libraries, exploitation
of model genomes via use of syntenic relationships,…),
the search for genes involved in
disease resistance, agronomic traits (e.g. tolerance
to water stress, molecular components of
yield), and end-use quality traits (e.g. genes in
wheat making good baking). In total, 43 projects
have been conducted during «Génoplante Crops»
phase 1 (1999-2001) and 48 other projects are
being conducted within a subsequent phase 2
(2002-2004).
About 400 scientists are mobilized on Génoplante’s
projects. Among them, about 100 young
scientists (post-docs, engineers, technicians) have
been recruited during Génoplante Phase 1 and an
equal number during Génoplante Phase 2. Clearly,
one of the most visible results of Génoplante
programs is its impressive structuring impact on
plant genomics in France, particularly in the Crops
projects. The Génoplante programs have already
generated a huge amount of data (hundreds of
thousands of ESTs, cDNAs, SNPs, BAC libraries,
thousands of new mutants lines 18 , RILs, transcriptomic
and proteomic data,…).All these data,
as well as newly developed software, are stored
in two parallel bioinformatics networks: RhoBio-
Info for the private members and Génoplante-Info
for the public members. These two networks are
connected by a secured connection, so that they
contain in real time exactly the same information,
readily accessible to all Génoplante members.For
example, more than 9,000 molecular analyses of
Arabidopsis mutants were made available in the
FLAGdb 19 database.
At the present time, results obtained within Génoplante
programs formed the basis for the proposal
of 14 patents, seven in Génoplante-Generics
and seven in Génoplante-Crops.
Toward the
creation of ERA
As outlined above, the huge number of
genes present in plants and the enormous complexity
of the gene networks responsible for the
expression of an agronomic trait immediately
raise the need for international collaboration.
Such collaborations should facilitate the sharing
of molecular and biological resources in order to
avoid duplication of effort and to reinforce the
competitiveness of individual researchers. During
the last years, there have been several actions
toward integration of plant science research in
order to promote the new area of plant genomics.
• One level was the creation of national programs.
In this manner, three years ago, France and Germany
decided to launch vast plant genomic programs,
associating public and private partners.
This led to the creation of Génoplante in France
and of GABI (Genomanalyse im Biologischen
System Pflanze ; President of the Scientific Coordinating
Committee of GABI: Thomas Altmann)
in Germany. It is noteworthy that this major
decision, enabling European nations to maintain
competitiveness in plant research for the first
time, encouraged several European countries to
federate their own plant genomic research.
• A second level of integration was the development
of bilateral collaborations between Géno-
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