The second major symposium of Plant Biology 2017, organized by Liam Dolan from the University of Oxford, is titled “Evolution of Cellular Development”. Symposium attendees will hear how new discoveries into the genetic regulation of development have provided fascinating insights into plant evolution.
When plants first colonized the land, they evolved a suite of novel tissue types to survive the challenges of their new environment. Investigating the comparative genetic and epigenetic regulation of cellular development in modern plants has provided key insights into our understanding of how these early innovations may have evolved.
Speaker John Bowman (Monash University) will describe how the development of multicellular haploid and diploid life stages in plants allowed them to spread across the terrestrial environment, while Keiko Torii (University of Washington) will discuss the origins of the mechanisms behind the development of stomatal pores, which enabled plants to break free of wet environments. Delegates will also not want to miss RIKEN’s Keiko Sugimoto speaking about the role of epigenetics in cell and tissue patterning. Plants and their development are intrinsically linked to their environment. Liam Dolan will explore one aspect of this relationship with his talk on the plant-soil interface over the past 500 million years of terrestrial plant evolution.
“Evolution of Cellular Development” will be held 8:30AM – 11:00AM Sunday, June 25, 2017 at Plant Biology 2017 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Registration is open now. For more information and a full list of the multidisciplinary sessions on offer, visit Plant Biology 2017.
