SPS Conference 2013: Plant signalling in a changing environment

It gathered 165 scientists from 17 countries (Algeria, Australia, Austria, Belgium, China, Germany, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Tunisia, UK, and USA).

The topic of this first conference was "Plant signalling in a changing environment". As sessile organisms, all plants have the capacity to sense and respond to changing conditions in their environment to appropriately modify their development and physiology. During land colonization, different plant species have used diverse strategies to cope with largely variable environmental conditions. Although a great amount of knowledge has been accumulated in many areas of plant biology, the molecular mechanisms underlying signaling and adaptation to the environment are still largely unclear. The aim of this 2.5-day conference was to discuss the latest discoveries on how plants respond to changes in their abiotic and biotic environmental conditions.

After an introduction on the SPS LabEx, 40 oral presentations have been carried out during 7 sessions on:

1) Biotic interactions
2) Abiotic interactions
3) Biodiversity and natural variation
4) Translational biology
5) Organization and functioning of complex crop genomes and traits
6) Epigenetics
7) Hormones.

Two plenary lectures have been presented by Paul Schulze-Lefert and Ian Small: “Structure, functions, and evolution of the bacterial root microbiota” and “Controlling gene expression in energy organelles”, respectively.

For more information, download the files below.

 The organizing committee:
 Heribert Hirt
 Martin Crespi
 Michael Hodges
 Herman Höfte
 Annie Marion-Poll
 Marie-Jeanne Sellier