Rusts are the most harming diseases limiting the common bread wheat (Triticum aestivum ssp. aestivum) production throughout this country, where wheat cultivation area stands around 9.3 million hectares yielding 19 million tons wheat per year. Yellow rust caused by the fungal pathogen, Puccinia striiformis f. sp. Tritici is one of the most damaging diseases affecting bread wheat cultivation in almost all regions of Turkey as well as world wide wheat cultivation. The main purpose of this project is the identification of molecular DNA markers linked with yellow rust resistance loci. Obtained molecular markers; (i) will able the fast genotyping of Turkish wheat varieties regarding yellow rust resistance genes at seedling and mature plant developmental stages and this information will be valuable to select suitable genotypes for gene pyramiding in plant breeding programs, also, diallele crosses will be tested for gene number and gene-gene interactions for yellow rust resistance (ii) the relationship between molecular markers obtained in this project and known resistance genes or new/unknown genes for yellow rust will be characterized. Finally, the determination of Turkish wheat genotypes in terms of yellow rust resistance sources will be realized.

To Remediate the Hydrocarbon Polluted Areas by use of Plants, Algae, and Microorganisms

The main purpose of the project, is to develop and improve technologies for the removal of the pollutants from water resources and soil caused by oil derivates by utilizing endemic plant, alg and bacteria species. The project will be the first wide-scale attempt in Turkey towards producing possible solutions for a vital environmental issue. Initially, we will screen local varieties of a forage crop, Medicago sativa, to determine the phenotypic variations for ability to grow and degrade oil components; subsequently, research will focus on elucidating genetic component of the variation. Bacterial species isolated from contaminated soil and water samples will be also further analyzed with the aim of characterizing genes that are likely to play role in biodegradation of oil derivatives. Besides soil and sea water pollution, oil contamination in limited potable water resources has become another major issue. To improve the water quality, the effect of water plants such as Lemna gibba, and Azolla anabenae on petroleum contaminated water will be studied. Similarly, possible ways of using alg species for decontamination of pollutants stemming from petroleum components from both sea and sweet water will be explored. In short, we will search the ways for improving and developing new bioremediation technologies to improve oil contaminated water and soil quality by mainly using endemic bacterial, algal and plant species.

Development of diagnostic kits for Hepatitis B infection by using serological and molecular techniques
Hepatitis B virus infection is major cause of acute and chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma and is still one of the world's significant health problem. Approximately 350 - 500 million people are chronic carriers of the virus worldwide and 2 million of them die annually from the sequela of HBV-associated disease. Although, chronic carriers appear healthy, they can transmit the virus to other people with whom they have close contact. In our country, most of the diagnostic kits used for the diagnosis of various human diseases, as well as hepatitis, were imported. The use of such diagnostic kits causes economical dependency and also causes important economical losses because of its high cost. In this project, ELISA kits by using monoclonal antibodies for early diagnosis of HBV and molecular techniques by using real time PCR for sensitive detection of HBV DNA, Hepatitis C virus RNA and Human Immunodeficiency virus RNA will be developed.

In vitro Conservation and Preliminary Molecular Identification of Some Turkish Native Domestic Animal Genetic Resources-1
Changing environmental conditions (rapid increase in population, global warming, disordered structuring, and environmental pollution) change the flora and fauna of the world irrepressibly and negatively. Studies carried out have showed that 27.000 animal and plant species per year disappear from the nature irreversibly. Today production of farm animals verges on an uniform pattern in the world. These lineages known as culture lineages are just animals with improved efficiency properties. However, no one has emphasized the resistance of them to environmental conditions or their disease resistances so far. Besides changes in environmental conditions, bioterrorism targets not only the life of people but also animals' life. These unfavourable factors have threatened the future of many species and lineages seriously. However, endemic domestic animals that preserve genetic variation are recognized as insurance of future with these properties. The subject of this project has been discussed on various platforms in Turkey for a long time and declared as a priority area. Various action plans have been prepared and put into development plans but this issue has not been solved so far. This national issue that should be solved immediately would be resolved to some extent with a big project by the contribution of Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, TUBITAK and 10 universities from all regions of Turkey. This project aims to establish banks (Gene banks) which preserve animal genetic resources, to start characterization of endemic domestic animal species to use gained knowledge in registration studies, to build national researcher capacity in animal genetics and biotechnology areas and to combine and disseminate knowledge. These banks would guarantee not just five years, a hundred years of our country. Samples from 1350 individuals belong to total 5 species would be preserved.

Establishment of the Infrastructure of a Microorganism Resource Centre Towards Enzyme Industry in Turkey

Due to the logarithmic increase on the utilization of microbial enzymes in textile, leather, detergent, food industries and environment sector in our country, the establishment of an enzyme industry in Turkey is being gained a gradually increasing strategic importance. On the other hand, because of the participation of microorganisms to the clean production technology development of Turkey; the identification, development and preservation of industrially important microbial strains and also their provision to the industrial sector for use in clean production technologies are being gained considerable importance. Within the scope of this project; by establishing the "Chemotaxonomy, Molecular Taxonomy and Microorganism Preservation Laboratories" in TUBITAK MRC GEBI, the formation of a Microorganism Resource Centre is being targeted comprising the activities such as the screening of extremophilic microorganisms capable to produce industrial enzymes from local ecosystems, development of special techniques for their preservation and collection in the active state, the characterisation and patenting of the related enzymes and their coding genes. A "Data Processing Unit" and a "Database" in the international standards will be developed for the record of identified microorganisms. This infrastructure that will be formed by this project is going to be used for serving to academic institutions and other R & D institutions of governmental and private sectors as depend on their demands towards to enzyme science and technology. In addition, by using the industrial enzyme producing microorganism collection that will be formed by this project and the scientific knowledge accumulation in enzyme biotechnology, the development of original research projects will be possible upon to make considerable contributions for the establishment of enzyme industry in the country.

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