Q-BOL Activities
QBOL Activities:
- Assemble all relevant collections of quarantine organisms available in EU and third countries and make them available.
- Investigate which and how many genes are required to identify quarantine organisms of each type (fungi, arthropods, bacteria, nematodes, viruses and phytoplasmas) using barcode sequences and generate these barcodes for the relevant taxa.
- Develop methods for effective amplification and storage of rare DNA samples, develop bioinformatics tools and a database system to enable the storage of relevant metadata for quarantine plant pathogens plus their relatives. This database system will allow links to the GenBank, EMBL and sister databases for storage of barcode sequences.
- Evaluation and validation of the developed DNA barcoding protocols and the use of DNA barcoding as a diagnostic tool by phytosanitary end-users like national reference labs (NRLs).
- The results obtained by QBOL will be disseminated to future end-users all over the world. Therefore mandated labs in EU and third countries will be trained and a final workshop and symposium will be organised in 2012.
QBOL Coordination:
The QBOL project is divided into several activities which are being coordinated by the QBOL consortium partners:
Barcoding of Arthropods
In this work package 198 species of Q-arthropods have been divided into two priority groups.
Barcoding of Bacteria
In this work package the work focussed on the Q-species within the genera Ralstonia, Xylella, Clavibacter and Xanthomonas.
Barcoding of Fungi
In this work package a short list of 19 Q-species were selected for barcoding.
Barcoding of Nematodes
In this work package a base list of 32 nematode species was created for which barcodes needed to be collected
Barcoding of Phytoplasmas
In this work package a prioritized list of all phytopathogenic phytoplasms relevant for the EU to be barcoded was established.
Barcoding of Viruses
Since viruses don’t contain a generic barcode gene, it was decided to sequence the whole genome of viruses in this work package using Next Generation Sequence Technology.
DNA Banks
DNA of quarantine organisms is scarce. Therefore in this work package an investigation in different protocols to store, transport and multiply DNA samples of these organisms was made.
DNA barcode library / Database / Informatics
The database (developed within the Dutch FES project, 2006-2010) has been further developed during the QBOL project in this work package.
Validation / Evaluation
In the first part of the QBOL project a survey was set-up to find out wishes and expectations of possible end-users (scientists and technicians of NPPO’s) regarding the data to be generated by QBOL and stored into the Q-bank database.
Dissemination
Within the QBOL project dissemination (WP11) played a major role in order to attract as much interest as possible for the outcome of this EU project.