The Handbook of Plant Genome Mapping

Khalid Meksem is Assistant Professor at the Department of Plant, Soil & General Agriculture of Southern Illinois University. After gaining his doctorate at the University of Cologne, Germany, he joined Southern Illinois University at the end of 1996. Dr. Meksem has taught courses on genomics and bioinformatics, as well as molecular genetics. His main research interests focus on -Genomics tools for soybean: TILLING, developing high throughput tool for gene functional analysis and reverse genetics. -BAC and physical mapping: physical map construction and integration -Soybean Cyst Nematode disease resistance genes: Genetic diversity, additional genes for resistance and resistance pathways -Plant pathogen genomics: Fusarium virguliforme structural and functional genomics, pathogenicity genes identification -Developing international and national scientific network on structural genomics in plants (Comparative physical mapping) and functional genomics (TILLING) Alongside registering four patents so far, Khalid Meksem is the associate editor of the Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology and a reviewer for a number of International Scientific Journals. He chaired the Functional genomic workshop at the International Plant & Animal Genome Conference in San Diego, and works as a reviewer for several granting agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Agriculture. Günter Kahl is Professor for Plant Molecular Biology at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. After gaining his Ph.D. in plant biochemistry, he spent two postdoctoral years at Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA, joining Professor Joe Varner and Professor James Bonner at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. His main research interests focus on -Gene technology, in particular the genetic and physical mapping as well as the isolation and characterization of plant defence genes and their promoters, and the use of in vitro modified defence genes for the improvement of plant crops via gene transfer. -Plant genome analysis, in particular the development of molecular marker technologies and informative DNA markers for genomic fingerprinting, the establishment of genetic maps, the use of BAC libraries and physical mapping, and the map-based cloning of agronomically important genes. -Expression profiling of plant tissues with expression microarrays and high-throughput techniques such as SAGE. Due to the international nature of this work, Professor Kahl cooperates with a series of research institutions throughout Europe, in Japan, the USA, Syria, India, and South America. In addition, he is currently organizing a series of molecular marker courses in Austria, South America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. He has also served in expert missions for IAEA, FAO and UNESCO in these and many other countries. Professor Kahl is the author of more than 250 scientific publications, and is currently CSO at GenXPro, a company specializing in novel technologies in genomics and transcriptomics, located at the Frankfurt Innovation Center for Biotechnology (FIZ), Frankfurt am Main, Germany.