CAN-TILL The Canadian TILLING Initiative University of British Columbia Vancouver, B.C., Canada PI: George Haughn (george.haughn@ubc.ca) RA: Erin Gilchrist (erin.gilchrist@ubc.ca)

TILLING (Targeted Induced Local Lesions in Genomes) is a powerful technique that can identify a series of alleles or SNPs in a target gene by heteroduplex analysis (Till BJ, et al. 2003, Genome Res. 13:524-530). It can be adapted for use in a high-throughput facility, and has been successfully applied to all organisms tested in our laboratory.

We are in the process of developing a TILLING service facility in Canada that will be able to identify mutations in genes from a wide variety of different organisms. To date we have established TILLING in Arabidopsis thaliana, Caenorhabditis elegans, Brassica oleracea, and Brassica napus. We have also used the technique to look at natural variation in Populus trichocarpa (here known as Ecotilling).

With the experience and facilities we have thus established, we hope to be able to secure funding that will allow us to expand our throughput capacity to the point where we can offer an open, non-profit, fee-for-service TILLING operation in multiple organisms.