The Teak Genome

Author Biography

Dr. Yasodha Ramasamy is experienced in forest biotechnology for 30 years and is presently working as a senior scientist at Institute of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding, Coimbatore. She has expertise in tree tissue culture, clonal propagation, DNA markers, QTL mapping, and association genetics.  Her research on micropropagation of bamboos, eucalypts and teak has been translated to field reality in the form of on-farm trials and large-scale adoption. She has substantially contributed in molecular characterization for clones, hybrids, and natural populations of eucalypts, teak, acacia, red sanders, and casuarina with various DNA marker systems for genetic diversity assessment, hybrid purity testing, and clonal DNA fingerprinting. Her research results were published in more than 40 international journals and book chapters. She has published the draft genome of teak by implementing a hybrid assembly strategy to integrate the short and long-read data. The genome assembly datawas characterized to categorize the various groups of repeat elements and genes that encode proteins involved in the durability of teak which paved way for functional genomic analysis. SSRs variations across teak samples were identified, which served as genotypic markers for tree improvement and teak genetic resource conservation programs. She has guided several students for their doctoral research and post-graduate thesis dissertations. She has been awarded for research excellence in forest biotechnology and honored with national and international fellowships. Her current area of research includes SNP-based genetic linkage map development in tropical eucalypts and population genome analyses in teak toward deciphering genome-wide associations for climate adaptation. Dr. Esteban Galeano is a well-experienced research scientist with research achievements in plant structural genomics, functional genomics, tree breeding, plant molecular genetics, and plant physiology inboth temperate/tropical trees and in native/exotic species. His research findings have been published in several international journals. He has reviewed several manuscripts related to teak genetics, genomics, and tree improvement. In his 15 years of experience working with teak and other tree species, he has been part of academic groups in several universities. Also, he has worked in private companies and in the public sector doing research, management, and on the innovation and development of plant biotechnology programs. One of his most relevant investigations was to establish the transcriptional profiling of several tissues of teak through RNA Illumina sequencing. The obtention  of thousands of expresses genes allowed to deeply study several teak transcription factors and regulatory networks, opening an enormous door for students, scientists, and researchers to begin characterizing interesting/target genes from those transcriptional profiles. He has also internationally collaborated with many researchers and institutions in the world, giving workshops, master classes, and lectures regarding tree genetics. He is currently a research associate at the University of Alberta (Canada), working with tree improvement programs funded by Canadian forestry companies. His current interest is in the early selection of elite plant material incorporating different cutting-edge approaches, such as qRT-PCR, SNP-based analysis for pedigree reconstruction and genomic selection, and advanced genetic mixed models, for both tropical and temperate tree species. Dr. Thwe Thwe Win has about 20 years of experiences in genetic studies, tree improvement, and conservation of precious tropical timber species, teak. She is working on the investigation of genetic information of teak from native region and population genetic study and geographic variation of teak in Myanmar. She was awarded MEXT scholar for her M.Sc. and Ph.D. study in Japan. She also received the ITTO fellowship for her teak research. As her research was outstanding, she was selected as a best Ph.D. student in Forestry Ecosystem Department of the University of Tokyo, Japan. She has published 13 research articles in national and international journals. She serves as a National Competent Authority of Myanmar for the implementation of CBD. She always encourages the people who establish the teak plantations for government and private sectors to use the genetically sound planting materials not only for production but also for conservation aspects. At the University of Forestry and Environmental Science, she supervises undergraduate and post-graduate students to accomplish their study. She also did peer review for several journals.