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

小行星9613640 会议的目标是将植物发育和进化生物学家的独立社区聚集在一起。 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Keystone研讨会。 第一次会议与会者众多，令人兴奋，这使我们得出结论，第二次会议也是如此。 我们继续努力将两个刚刚开始合作的领域结合起来。 第一个领域是植物发育的分子遗传学，目前最令人兴奋的工作集中在（i）识别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植物王国中观察到的巨大形态多样性。 第二个领域是植物形态学和分子进化，在利用分子方法建立高等植物进化史和植物形态学如何进化的新观点方面都有令人兴奋的工作。自1993年以来，在植物生物学中有了深刻的发现，包括第一个植物抗性基因的分离，成花诱导在不同物种中进化保守的证明，植物基因组的同线性，以及负责密切相关植物中主要形态差异的基因的分离。 通过专注于这些和其他最近在植物发育生物学方面的进展，揭示了进化的历史或机制，我们的计划能够专注于一系列智力连贯和具有挑战性的主题。 学生和博士后应该从演讲和讨论的多学科基调中受益匪浅，因为他们倾向于集中在狭窄的研究项目上。 这次会议应该是一个新的研究方向，可以融入他们的未来计划的源泉。

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.