LICA

The LICA (Tree Cell Engineering Lab) is a technical platform inaugurated in 2017 on the Orleans site of the INRAE Val de Loire Center. It is intended to house in a single location and for the duration of studies involving the production and characterization of genetically modified or edited trees. It is a confined building of the L2S2 type that complies with biological safety regulations. Thus, LICA's vocation is to meet the research, training and service needs of public or private research teams involving the production, multiplication and characterization of genetically modified forest resources for experimental purposes and aiming to increase our knowledge of the physiology of forest trees and their capacity to adapt to different environmental constraints. The activities developed at LICA mainly concern : * The multiplication and breeding of forest trees from in vitro culture. This activity benefits from laboratories, in vitro culture chambers and automated greenhouses. * Genetic transformation by co-culture of Agrobacteria to carry out functional genomic studies mainly in poplar, a model species for forest trees. The proposed techniques allow ectopic expression, expression reduction (by RNA interference) and KO (by genome editing) of the targeted genes. * Basic molecular biology techniques to select the most promising events on trees grown under controlled conditions. * Phenotyping techniques to evaluate the effects of the modification of the expression of target genes. LICA is particularly well equipped to carry out microphenotyping, especially in wood, the emblematic tissue of trees, thanks to its equipment and skills in histology (fluorescence stereomicroscopy, fluorescence microscopy, laser confocal microcopy, etc.) and molecular imaging (immunolocalizations, in situ hybridization, infrared microspectroscopy).