It’s time to register for the Plant Biology meeting, July 9 – 13 in Austin, Texas. Hurry, because the deadline to have your abstract considered for a minisymposium or lightning talk is January 25!
The Major Symposia are always some of the highlights of the Plant Biology meetings. They bring together some of the most influential speakers to describe the hottest topics in plant biology today. Here are the major symposia topics, organizers and speakers scheduled for PlantBiology16.
Symposium I: Small RNA Regulation of Genes and Development
Organizer: Craig Pikaard, Indiana University (Gibbs Medal Award Symposium)
Speakers
Xuemei Chen University of California, Riverside
Mike Axtell Penn State University
Rob Martienssen Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
The discovery of small regulatory RNAs, including microRNAs (miRNAs) and short interfering RNAs (siRNAs), has had a profound impact on our understanding of how genes and transposons are regulated during development. The Gibbs Medal Symposium will feature talks by several leaders in the field, whose laboratories are investigating the biogenesis, turnover and varied functions of miRNAs and siRNAs in plants.
Symposium II: Developing Healthier Foods: Quality, Nutrition, and Molecular Gastronomy
Organizer: Harry Klee, University of Florida
Speakers
Linda Bartoshuk University of Florida
Andrew Allan Plant and Food in New Zealand
Cathie Martin John Innes Centre
This symposium focuses on foods, emphasizing flavor and nutrition. Engaging the public using foods, flavor and nutrition to illustrate modern scientific methodologies. How large, inter-disciplinary approaches including genetics, biochemistry, sensory science and medicine can tackle highly complex challenges and facilitate real world solutions. What do we want in our foods? How do we produce the foods that people want in order to eat better and healthier?
Symposium III: New Biological Insights from Large Scale Biology
Organizer: Ute Krämer, Senior Editor, The Plant Cell
Speakers
Seung Yon (Sue) Rhee Carnegie Institution for Science
Siobhan Brady University of California Davis
Zoran Nikoloski Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology
Blake Myers Danforth Plant Science Center
The Plant Cell is sponsoring a major symposium entitled New Biological Insights from Large-Scale Biology to showcase the best of plant biology and the type of research we would like to publish within our pages. The symposium will highlight how high-throughput genomic, proteomic, metabolomic, and modeling approaches are providing novel insights into principles of biological phenomena. The speakers will show that state-of-the-art methodologies coupled to computational approaches can reveal complex biological networks in all areas of plant biology, including development, metabolism, interactions with the abiotic and biotic environment, and dynamics in the molecular ecology and evolution of plant populations. The speakers will use conceptual slides to address a general plant biology audience and focus on novel biological insights in the context of how they were obtained using large-scale biology tools.
Symposium IV: Long Distance and Cell to Cell Signaling
Organizer: Philip Benfey, Duke University
Speakers
Yoshikatsu Matsubayashi Nagoya University
Jennifer Nemhauser University of Washington
Ykä Helariutta Sainsbury Lab
To respond to developmental and environmental changes, plants use a range of signaling strategies. Molecules that act as signals include hormones, peptides, proteins and RNAs. Some act between adjacent cells, while others function between distant organs. Speakers in this symposium will describe their research aimed at uncovering the mechanisms behind both short and long-range signaling in plants.
Symposium V: Plant Specialized Metabolism
Organizer: Richard Dixon, University of North Texas and ASPB President Speakers
Speakers
Anne Osbourn John Innes Centre
Joe Noel Salk Institute
Ian Baldwin Max Planck Institute, Jena
Gregg Beckham National Renewable Energy Laboratory
One of four major priorities in ASPB’s Decadal Vision document entitled “Unleashing a Decade of Innovation in Plant Science” is to develop an understanding of the synthesis and biological purposes of plant-derived chemicals. Although around 30% of the genes in most plant genomes are involved in metabolism, the specialized metabolites of only a small number of the approximately 400,000 species of flowering plants on our planet have been characterized. Plant specialized metabolism has, for many years, been treated as a “specialized” subject, primarily because many metabolites are restricted to specific plant families or occasionally even species, and therefore not seen to be of general interest to plant scientists, of broad relevance to plant biology, or attractive to funding agencies. This situation is now changing. The purpose of the 2016 President’s Symposium is to highlight aspects of plant specialized metabolism that relate to broader aspects of biology, namely genome organization, evolution, ecology and exploitation for bio-based products.