07-10 October 2009
Lisbon, Portugal
A few notes about our speakers
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Nina Fedoroff |
Pennsylvania State University, USA A major project in the laboratory is investigating the responses of plants to biotic (pathogens) and abiotic (ozone, temperature, chemicals) stresses using DNA microarray gene expression profiling and reverse genetics. Other subjects being investigated include hormone signaling, transposable elements, and epigenetic mechanisms. She is a leading geneticist and molecular biologist, an Evan Pugh Professor of the Pennsylvania State University and a member of the External Faculty of the Santa Fe Institute. She received numerous awards and honors. In 2006, she received the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest award for lifetime achievement in scientific research. She is science adviser to the secretary of state and administrator of the Agency for International Development. |
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Catherine Feuillet |
Senior scientist at INRA Clermont-Ferrand, France Catherine Feuillet, a senior scientist at INRA Clermont-Ferrand (France) is leading projects aiming at deciphering the structure, function and evolution of the wheat genome and at the implementation of this knowledge for wheat improvement. She is one of the co-chairs of the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC), the International Triticeae Mapping Initiative (ITMI), and the European Triticeae Genomics Initiative (ETGI). Catherine won the 2009 "Femme en or" trophy for research which recognizes a female researcher or teacher-researcher for the acclaim won by her work. The criteria for the trophy are: international visibility, research excellence, and the ability to popularise her area of research as well as research in general. |
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Christine Foyer |
Holds the Chair in Plant Crop Sciences at the University of Leeds, U.K. She works in the field of cellular redox metabolism, in relation to photosynthesis, respiration and stress biology. She has made a significant contribution to our current understanding of plant cell redox homeostasis, particularly the molecular and physiological functions of ascorbate and glutathione. Christine has published extensively and consistently in the highest rated plant biology journals. To date, she has published over 200 original papers, 40 reviews, 62 book chapters and one book as well as editing four other books. Her original papers and reviews are always highly cited (her H score 59). Christine is also active in supporting public engagement activities and she works closely with colleagues in Africa in capacity building and education projects. The goal of this work is to develop a better understanding of the responses that enable plants to withstand environmental abiotic stresses particularly drought and chilling. |
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Elena Baena-González |
Principal Investigator at IGC, Portugal Despite the fundamental importance of stress tolerance as a major factor affecting plant growth and productivity, much remains unknown about how plants sense and adapt to unpredictable environmental changes that compromise photosynthesis and respiration and deplete energy supplies. Our work has shown that very different types of stress converge as energy-derived signals that are translated into similar transcriptional responses by the Arabidopsis KIN10 and KIN11 protein kinases. Our current efforts aim at elucidating the regulatory mechanisms governing KIN10/11 action as well as at identifying other components of this central signaling cascade. Dissection of such convergent regulatory nodes may provide new tools to engineer stress tolerance. Moreover, it may contribute to understanding how metabolic, hormonal and environmental signals are integrated to optimize plant growth in an ever-changing environment. |
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Charles H. Opperman |
Professor North Carolina State University, USA He is project Director for the Tobacco Genome Initiative (which aims to sequence tag greater than 90% of the genes in Nicotiana) and for the plant parasitic nematode, Meloidogyne hapla (root-knot nematode) Genome Initiative. The main thrust of his program is aimed at understanding the cellular and genetic basis of parasitism. A key approach in all of these projects is using phylogenetic relationships to help determine gene function and evolution.Moreover, his group is completing a whole genome shotgun sequence of the nematode-parasitic bacterium, Pasteuria penetrans. In addition, he is keenly interested in the differences between free-living and parasitic nematode species. For example, the root-knot nematode sequencing project will take advantage of genome co-linearity with Caenorhabditis elegans. Similar approaches have been utilized for the bacterial sequences and the solanaceous tobacco genes. |
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Sophien Kamoun |
Project Leader, The Sainsbuty Laboratory, Norwich, UK He is one of top plant pathologists and world expert in the fungus-like plant pathogen that causes potato late blight, the disease that was responsible for the Irish potato famine. Tunisian-born but spent most of his career in the US before joining the Sainsbury Lab, where he continues to exploit genomics resources to improve understanding of plant pathosystems. He pioneered the use of functional genomics strategies that link plant pathogen sequences to phenotypes and is credited with discovering several effector families from pathogenic oomycetes. Dr. Kamoun has also led community efforts to obtain a high-quality sequence of the Phytophthora infestans genome. |
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Cécile Grenier |
Department of Agronomy , Lilly Hall of Life Sciences, Purdue University, USA Cécile worked seven years at Purdue University in Dr. Gebisa Ejeta's group and was involved in key aspects of the work that will be presented. The group focuses on analysis and exploitation of genetic resistance to the major biotic and abiotic stresses of the sorghum crop. Problems associated with the nutritional quality of sorghum for food and feed are also addressed, and more recently the potential use of the crop for alternative energy. Drought tolerance and resistance to diseases (leaf rust and grain mold) are important problems of sorghum both in the US and Africa. Early season seedling cold tolerance is an increasingly major constraint to expanding sorghum acreage into the northern United States. The parasitic weed, Striga has been an intractable and endemic problem in Africa. In each of these constraints, our general approach has been to develop a better understanding of the overall interactions between the host and/or the pathogen, and the influence of the environment in determining the expression of tolerance or resistance to these stresses. The group’s priority is to generate genetic variation through various means and to employ the best possible biological tools to influence selection in the desired direction. Cécile is now a rice geneticist/breeder working at Cirad and out-posted in Colombia at CIAT. |
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Rajeev K. Varshney |
Principal Scientist (Applied Genomics) at the Applied Genomics Laboratory, GT- Biotechnology, ICRISAT, India He has over 10 years research experience in the area of plant genomics and crop biotechnology. His group at ICRISAT is engaged in development and application of modern genomics tools for legume genetics and breeding. He has over 100 research papers/articles in the reputed journals and four edited books to his credit. He has been extensively cited in international literature (citation index has exceeded 1500). He is serving the Editorial Board of several international journals (eg.: Molecular Breeding, Plant Breeding, Euphytica, Plant Genetic Resources) and international platforms, funding agencies, etc. Based on his contribution to crop genomics applied to breeding, he has won several awards: INSA Young Scientist Medal, 2008 (by the Indian National Science Academy); Associate Fellow - 2008 (by National Academy of Agricultural Sciences - NAAS, India); and Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award - 2007 (by The National Academy of Sciences, India - NASI) amongst many others. He has been a frequent speaker/ chair in international conferences/meetings. |
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Barbara Hohn |
Emeritus of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI), Basel, CH With a vast previous work on different subjects (from bacteriophage lambda to Agrobacterium tumefaciens and homologous recombination in plants), she has more recently become interested in transgenerational memory of environmental impact on plants. Genomes change over time with an essential contribution of homologous recombination, active as DNA repair pathway in somatic tissue and of critical importance for rearrangement of genes during meiosis. With the help of specially designed marker genes in the transformed model plant Arabidopsis thaliana somatic recombination events could be monitored. Especially fascinating was the finding that not only agents acting directly on the DNA but also other environmentally important influences such as pathogen attack led to increases in homologous recombination. Could this be part of evolutionary drive? Moreover, plants treated with UV or a molecule imitating a pathogen provided their untreated progeny with a molecularly undefined, but certainly epigenetically based kind of memory of their experience, and progeny of treated plants exhibited a higher level of homologous recombination than progeny of untreated plants. |
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Olga Pontes |
Research Assist. Professor of Biology, Washington University, St. Louis and Director of the Imaging Facility of the Biology Department, Washington Univ., St. Louis, USA RNA interference (RNAi) is a widely conserved mechanism for regulating fundamental cellular processes, including gene regulation. In RNAi, members of the Dicer protein family process double stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) into small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), which are loaded into Argonaute protein-containing effector complexes known as RNA-induced silencing complexes (RISC). RISCs then guide sequence-specific silencing through mRNA degradation or repressive chromatin modifications. We found evidences that strongly suggest a stepwise model for nuclear siRNA biogenesis and target locus chromatin modifications that involve different nuclear domains in Arabidopsis thaliana. Our aim is to better understand the subnuclear compartmentalization, assembly and mode of action of RNAi-mediated effector complexes that direct chromatin modifications to specific target loci. |
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Pere Arús |
Chief Scientist of IRTA, Cabrils, Spain Chief Scientist of IRTA (Cabrils, Spain) he is, since 2004, vice-director of the Center for Research on Agricultural Genomics (CSIC-IRTA-UAB). He specialized in the use of molecular tools to assist plant breeding and to study crop evolution. Most of his research activities focused on the genetics of three crops: Prunus fruit trees (mainly peach and almond), melon and strawberry. |
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Michele Morgante |
Full Professor, Dept. of Crop Science and Agricultural Engineering, Univ. Udine, and Scientific Director of Istituto di Genomica Applicata in Udine, Italy He worked for 5 years at DuPont Crop Genomics as Senior Scientist. His team has been instrumental in establishing a number of genetic technology platforms that are now being widely deployed in plant genomic research (e.g. microsatellites, fluorescent BAC fingerprinting). He is currently focusing on genome analysis in plants, including physical mapping, genome sequencing and resequencing and genome evolution studies, and on sequence diversity analysis and association mapping. He is particularly interested in novel approaches to dissecting complex traits and in developing the genomics and informatics technologies needed for this. Lately he has become interested in understanding the role of junk DNA in determining phenotypic variation. |
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Michael Bevan |
Head, Cell and Developmental Biology Department, John Innes Centre, U The team has a vast work in a number of subjects, including in Genome Bioinformatics, and in Defining Gene Expression Networks in Arabidopsis. Together with the Computational Biology Group at JIC, the team has developed the AtiDB Arabidopsis functional genomics database (http://www.atidb.org/). Planet (http://www.eu-plant-genome.net/) is a comprehensive integrated database of Arabidopsis genomics and functional genomics information. |
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Wolfram Weckwerth |
Head of Department, Molecular Systems Biology, Univ. of Vienna, Austria Profiling provides snapshots of all the metabolites, proteins, or gene transcripts expressed in an organism or tissue at a given point of time. Through profiling, it is becoming clear that regulatory responses to genetic or environmental perturbations are not enacted via linear pathways, but rather by dynamic networks of metabolites, proteins, and genes.Since phosphorylation status often controls the structure, function, and interactions of proteins carrying regulatory responses, our group is developing and applying non-targeted profiling technologies in Arabidopsis for proteomics (protein profiling) and phosphoproteomics. We integrate these approaches with transcript and metabolite profiling to get a fresh look at network dynamics and to reveal unexpected regulatory control mechanisms at system level. |
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Yuri Gleba |
Managing Director (and co-founder) Icon Genetics GmbH, Nomad Bioscience GmbH Yuri is a scientist, inventor, science manager and entrepreneur, who founded three biotech companies. He and his team discover and develop new biopharmaceuticals and high-value protein products using green plants as production hosts. Icon Genetics and Nomad Bioscience have developed new generation production platforms that address speed, yield, precision, expression control and safety of plant-based manufacturing. |
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Paul Christou |
Investigador ICREA, Universitat de Lleida, Head of the Applied Plant Biotechnology Laboratory, Lleida, Spain For the past several years the group has been investigating the organization of foreign genes in important crops such as maize, rice and wheat and its impact on transgene expression levels and stability. Applied aspects of our research include production of high value recombinant pharmaceuticals (vaccines and antibodies) in plants for use in human health and veterinary medicine; engineering crop plants for enhanced nutrition and novel strategies of sustainable and environmentally friendly agriculture using transgenic approaches, all with emphasis on developing countries, poverty alleviation and food security. The group is also heavily involved in training and capacity building in the area of plant biotechnology focusing on developing countries. |
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Andreas Renz |
BASF Plant Science Senior Licensing Manager & Technology Scout Europe. |
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Inge Broer |
Chair of Agrobiotechnology and Applied Research in Bio- and Gene-Technology University of Rostock, Germany Inge Broer's research is on the usage of transgenic plants for a sustainable agriculture. In her lab at the University of Rostock she is involved in the production of vaccines and biodegradable polymers in transgenic plants. In addition, the environmental influence on transgene expression is analysed in order to ensure stable expression of transgenes in the field. One of the major concerns is the analysis of biosafety, mainly focussed on the plants produced in the group. Therefore she organised the first field trials on transgenic potatoes producing pharmaceuticals in Europe. In order to enable a holistic, sensitive but cost effective analysis of potential risks for environment and consumers, Inge Broer established an interdisciplinary network of scientists (BioOK) that is collaborating closely in the development of new methods to optimize risk assessment on transgenic plants. To ensure the preservation of the European threshold 0.9% of transgenic inbreeding, she coordinated the German Erprobungsanbau on transgenic maize and is involved in gene flow analysis of canola. Part of the work is done in the AgroBioTechnicum in Groß Lüsewitz near Rostock, an incubator initiated by the association FINAB (Head Inge Broer). |
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Wout Boerjan |
Bio-energy VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology, UGent, BELGIUM The major long-term goal of the Bio-energy group is to understand, through systems biology, the biosynthesis, polymerization and structure of lignin, and how lignin biosynthesis integrates into plant metabolism and development. This will provide the fundamental knowledge that is necessary to breed for, or engineer plant cell walls that are easier to convert to bio-ethanol. Both Arabidopsis and poplar are used as model systems. The genetic resources available in Populus, such as the availability of the genome sequence, mapping pedigrees and association populations, allow approaching the bio-energy problem also from a genetics point of view, and immediately in a target bio-energy crop. |
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Jacqueline Grima-Pettenati |
Research director, DR2 CNRS, Pôle de Biotechnologies Végétales, France The formation of xylem is a fascinating example of differentiation which necessitates the spatial and temporal coordination of the expression of several hundreds of genes involved in cell division, elongation, formation of a lignified secondary wall and programmed cell death. The secondary walls of xylem cells possess unique characteristics (biochemical composition and tridimensional association of polymers) which govern the intrinsic properties of wood of forestry trees. They especially contain high amounts of lignins, hydrophobic phenolic compounds, which constitute an obstacle to the optimal utilisation of plant species in paper industry. To get insight into the molecular mechanisms involved during xylogenesis, we have chosen to focus on one of the major determinants of gene expression, i.e. transcriptional regulation.Our project is mainly targeted to Eucalyptus, the first plant species for industrial plantations in the world, which is also adapted to genomic approaches according to its small genome size, availability of genetic maps and QTLs. |
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Thomas Mitchell-Olds |
Professor of Biology at Duke University, USA. Spent 9 years as Director of the Max-Planck Institute of Chemical Ecology Much of our research is focused on the genes that affect ecological success and evolutionary fitness in natural environments. Similarly, the interaction of crop plants with their biotic and abiotic environments is controlled by complex trait variation which can be elucidated by interdisciplinary analyses incorporating functional genomics, physiological and chemical ecology, and population and quantitative genetics. We work at several levels: genetic variation within populations, local adaptation among populations, and the evolution of species differences. Our study system is centered on the wild relatives of Arabidopsis, as well as physiological genomics of grasses and cereals in natural and agricultural populations. |