Georges Pelletier

Georges Pelletier (born 1943) is a French agricultural engineer and Doctor of Science. He spent his career at the National Institute of Agricultural Research (INRA) in the Department of Plant Genetics and Improvement. He headed the Unit of the INRA Versailles Centre from 1991 to 1999, chaired from 2001 to 2010, the Operational Management Board of the Group of Scientific Interest in Plant Genomics Genoplant,[1] and from 2010 to 2013 was appointed to the French Agency for Research (ANR) scientific manager of the Biotechnologies and Bio-resources programme for "Investments for the Future". He was a member of the Biomolecular Engineering Commission and the Scientific Council of the Genopoles. Member of the French Academy of sciences (2004)[2] and the Academy of Agriculture (2004),[3] he was awarded the Lauriers d'excellence de INRA (2006).[4]

Scientific work

His field of research has been the study of multiplication and reproduction mechanisms in angiosperms.

First, by generating haploid individuals, either by in vitro culture of immature pollen, in tobacco and asparagus,[5] or by selecting fertilization anomalies that eliminate one of the parental genomes.[6] This work has led to the clarification of sex determinism in asparagus, a dioecious species, and has provided the method for obtaining fully male F1 hybrid varieties, which have since been widely developed.

He developed a genetics of cytoplasmic organelles in higher plants by protoplast fusion, revealing the existence of almost systematic recombinations between mitochondrial genomes and the exchange of chloroplasts between the parents of these fusions.[7] The application of these principles to the species of the Brassicaceae family[8] has led to the discovery of the mitochondrial gene responsible for male sterility (absence of pollen) known as Ogura, which is found in the genus Raphanus.[9][10] It is an additional gene whose only biological function is to block pollen formation. It is involved in gynodoecia (a species composed of females and hermaphrodites) in the genus Raphanus. The discovery of the gene responsible for male sterility, its transfer to Brassica by fusion of protoplasts, and the selection of mitochondrial recombinants with improved agronomic characteristics have enabled this male sterility to be widely distributed and exploited in Europe and North America for the production of hybrid varieties in rapeseed and various cabbage.[11]

He showed that the gene transfer bacterium, Agrobacterium tumefaciens, introduced by simple infiltration into the plant, is unexpectedly capable of transferring its T-DNA to female gametes.[12][13] An original method of transformation to create collections of "insertion mutants" in the Arabidopsis thaliana genome has been developed for his team to study the genes that control reproductive mechanisms, whether they are meiosis and recombination of chromosomes[14] or gametogenesis, pollen and embryonic sac development. On a global scale, the method has been widely used as one of the major tools for functional analysis of the genome of A. thaliana, a plant model of plant genomics.

Distinctions
  •    Jean-Dufrenoy Prize from the Académie d'agriculture de France in 1986;
  •    Doistaut-Blutet Prize of the French Academy of sciences in 1989;
  •    Laurier de la recherche agronomique de l'INRA in 2006.

Decorations

References
  1. Notice détaillé sur le site de l'INRA
  2. "Académie des sciences".
  3. "Académie d'Agriculture de France".
  4. "INRA-Lauriers d'excellence".
  5. Pelletier G. , Raquin C. , and Simon G., « a culture d’anthères d’asperge (Asparagus officinalis) », L. C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, 1972, série d, 274, p. 848-851
  6. Pelletier G. , Ferault M. , Goujaud J. , Vedel F. and Caboche M., « The use of rootless mutants for the screening of spontaneous androgenetic and gynogenetic haploids in Nicotiana tabacum; evidence for the direct transfer of cytoplasm », Theor. Appl. Genet., 1987, 75, p. 13-15
  7. Belliard G. , Vedel F. and Pelletier G., « Mitochondrial recombination in cytoplasmic hybrids of Nicotiana by protoplast fusion », Nature, 1979, 281, p. 401-403
  8. Pelletier G. , Primard C. , Vedel F. , Chetrit P. , Remy R. , Rousselle P. and Renard M., « Intergeneric cytoplasmic hybridization in Cruciferae by protoplast fusion », Mol. Gen. Genet., 1983, 191, p. 244-250
  9. Bonhomme S. , Budar F. , Ferault M. and Pelletier G., « A 2.5 Nco I fragment of Ogura radish mitochondrial DNA is correlated with cytoplasmic male sterility in Brassica cybrids », Curr. Genet., 1991, 19, p. 121-127
  10. Grelon M. , BUDAR F. , Bonhomme S. and Pelletier G., « Ogura CMS-associated orf138 is translated into a mitochondrial membrane polypeptide in male-sterile Brassica cybrids », Mol. Gen. Genet., 1994, 243, p. 540-547
  11. Pelletier G. and Budar F., Brassica Ogu-INRA Cytoplasmic Male sterility: an example of successful plant somatic fusion for hybrid seed production; In X-Q Li, D.J. Donnelly and T.G.Jensen eds. Somatic Genome Manipulation, New York, Heidelberg, Dordrecht, London, Springer, 2015, p. 199-216
  12. Bechtold N. , Ellis J. and Pelletier G., « In planta Agrobacterium mediated gene transfer by infiltration of adult Arabidopsis thaliana plants », C. R. Acad. Sci., Ser. III ; Life Sci., 1993, 316, p. 1194-1199
  13. Bechtold N., Jaudeau B., Jolivet S., Maba B., Vezon D., Voisin R. and Pelletier G., « The maternal chromosome set is the target of the T-DNA in the in planta transformation of Arabidopsis thaliana », Genetics, 2000, 155, p. 1875-1887
  14. Grelon M., VezonD., Gendrot G. and Pelletier G., « AtSPO11-1  is necessary for efficient meiotic recombination in plants », EMBO J, 2001, 20 (3), p. 589-600
  15. Décret du 13 mai 2016 portant promotion et nomination
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