Meeting: Keystone Symposia on "Plant Receptor Kinases" to be held in Taos, NM from February 8-13, 2015

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Plants are under constant pressure to respond rapidly and accurately to changing environmental and developmental conditions and must rapidly translate extracellular signals into appropriate intracellular responses. Cell surface receptor kinases (RKs) are one of the major components in this extracellular sensing. Plants show a huge expansion of the RK family compared to animals. However, only a very limited number of plant RKs have an assigned function, but those characterized control critical aspects ranging from development to responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. The 2015 Keystone Symposia meeting on "Plant Receptor Kinases: From Molecules to Environment" will highlight recent developments in our understanding of RKs, from their evolution and the pathways they are involved in, to the molecular details underlying their function and thereby provide the platform for discussions of emerging themes. The processes controlled by plant RKs include gas exchange, innate immunity, establishment of beneficial symbioses, and control of intrinsic growth/yield. Thus, there are many direct implications for plant performance in the field and at the ecosystem level, and the meeting will be of broad interest to scientists in academia, government and the private sector. The diversity of topics presented at this meeting is typically not covered within a single meeting. Other meetings, by necessity, focus on specific areas while this Keystone Symposia meeting will bring together world-leaders in their respective areas and, by sharing latest research findings and new experimental approaches/methods, will facilitate advances in other areas as well. As such, this meeting will enhance infrastructure by fostering networking and initiation of collaborations that will move this exciting field forward. The meeting will also further the following educational benefits: acquaint trainees and investigators new to field with the state-of-the-art; critical scientific feedback; and career development for trainees and new investigators, including opportunities both to see successful scientists presenting cutting-edge science and to network with prospective mentors and others who might contribute to their scientific and professional development.Technical Summary:The Keystone Symposia scientific conference on "Plant Receptor Kinases" has the following principal objectives: 1) to facilitate enhanced development of plant RK research; and 2) to provide opportunities for graduate students and postdocs to present results and interact with authorities in the field. Thus, the organizers, Drs. Cyril Zipfel (Sainsbury Laboratory, UK) and Steven C. Huber (USDA/ARS, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), have designed the program to bring together world-leaders that collectively cover a wide range of topics that are of fundamental importance to plant RK research. Each session will also include one or more talks selected from the contributed abstracts to give students and postdocs the opportunity to participate in the program beyond a poster session and to capture the widest range of exciting new developments. Because tyrosine phosphorylation is an emerging theme in plant RK biology, the meeting will start with a key note address by an expert (Dr. Mark Lemmon) in the area of animal receptor tyrosine kinase signaling. The individual sessions that follow will then sequentially present the status of RK research in fundamental aspects of growth with some specific focus on the BRASSINOSTEROID INSENSITIVE 1 (BRI1) RK, which functions in growth and is one of the most studied plant RKs. The function and composition of RK complexes will then be developed along with the complementary topic of trafficking through the secretory and endocytic pathways. The focus of Workshop I on structural aspects of plant RKs will enhance efforts to understand mechanisms at the molecular level. With this foundation, subsequent sessions will explore the role of RKs in specific developmental programs (e.g., stomatal development) and microbe interactions (both beneficial and pathogenic). The second Workshop will highlight state-of-the-art proteomic approaches to study RK activity and function, culminating in a final session of translational RK science and evolutionary aspects. The time is right for this meeting as new results are emerging relating to the importance of tyrosine phosphorylation in RK function; the role of structure of extracellular and cytoplasmic domains of plant RKs; the complexities of RK trafficking; and the importance of beneficial microbial interactions in addition to pathogenic microbes. This diversity of topics is typically not covered within a single meeting. Importantly, ample discussion time is included in the program design to allow participants to identify common interests and forge new collaborations spanning areas.