Conference on Evolution of Plant Development: to be held January 20-26, 1997, Taos, NM

9613640韦斯勒会议的目标是将植物发育和进化生物学家的不同社区聚集在一起。这将是专门讨论这一主题的第二次大型会议。第一次是在1993年举行的，也是我们组织的一次基石研讨会。这次出席人数众多的第一次会议所产生的兴奋使我们得出结论，它与第二次会议的情况相同。我们继续尝试加入刚刚开始合作的两个领域。第一个领域是植物发育的分子遗传学，其中最令人兴奋的工作目前集中在(I)确定指导细胞分化模式的调控基因和(Ii)了解基因组可塑性如何有助于产生在植物界观察到的巨大形态多样性。第二个领域是形态和分子植物进化，在使用分子方法建立高等植物进化史和植物形态如何进化的新概念方面都有令人兴奋的工作。自1993年以来，植物生物学领域有了许多重大发现，包括分离了第一批植物抗性基因，证明了开花诱导在不同物种中在进化上是保守的，植物基因组的同源性，以及分离出了导致近缘植物主要形态差异的基因。通过集中于这些和其他植物发育生物学中揭示进化历史或机制的最新进展，我们的课程能够专注于一系列智力上连贯和具有挑战性的主题。学生和博士后应该会从演讲和讨论的多学科基调中受益匪浅，因为他们倾向于将重点放在狭隘的研究项目上。这次会议应该是一个新的研究方向的源泉，可以纳入他们未来的计划。

9613640 Wessler The meeting goal is to bring together the separate communities of plant developmental and evolutionary biologists. This will be only the second large conference devoted exclusively to this topic. The first, held in 1993, was also a Keystone Symposium that we organized. The excitement generated by this well-attended first meting led us to conclude that it is the same as those for this second meeting. We continue in our attempt to join two fields that have just begun to collaborate. The first field is molecular genetics of plant development where the most exciting work is currently focusing on (i) identifying the regulatory genes directing patterns of cell differentiation and (ii) understanding how genomic plasticity contributes to generating the vast morphological diversity observed in the plant kingdom. The second field is morphological and molecular plant evolution, with exciting work both in the use of molecular methods to establish evolutionary history of higher plants, and on new ideas of how plant morphology has evolved. There have been profound discoveries in plant biology since 1993 including the isolation of the first plant resistance genes, the demonstration that floral induction is evolutionarily conserved in diverse species, the synteny of plant genomes, and the isolation of genes responsible for major morphological differences in closely related plants. By concentrating on these and other recent advances in plant developmental biology that shed light on evolutionary history or mechanisms, our program is able to focus on an intellectually coherent and challenging set of topics. Students and postdoctorals should benefit tremendously from the multidisciplinary tone of the talks and the discussions since they have a tendency to focus intensely on narrow research projects. This meeting should be a well-spring of new research directions that can be integrated into their plans for the future.