Diego Lijavetzky, a plant geneticist, working at the Institute of Agricultural Biology of Mendoza

Diego Lijavetzky, a plant geneticist, working at the Institute of Agricultural Biology of Mendoza (CONICET-University of Cuyo, Argentina) has been invited to IPS2 by the Université Paris-Sud as a guest scientist during June, hosted by Martin Crespi group.

Diego mainly works on the understanding of gene regulations involved in different grapevine quality traits, using genetic, genomic and bioinformatic approaches on the natural allele variation of this species. During this visit, they will deepen a collaborative project started last year on the involvement of non-coding RNAs in natural genetic variation of grapevine cultivars showing different adaptive abilities to climate change. In this sense, genetic variants with a long maturation cycle (low rate of sugar accumulation) could displace their maturation to less warm periods and be less sensitive to high temperatures.