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

会议的目标是将植物发育和进化生物学家的不同群体聚集在一起。这将是第二次专门讨论这一主题的大型会议。第一次是在1993年，也是我们组织的基石研讨会。出席人数众多的第一次会议所引起的兴奋使我们得出结论，第二次会议的兴奋程度与第二次会议相同。我们继续努力把刚刚开始合作的两个领域结合起来。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在植物界观察到的巨大形态多样性。第二个领域是植物形态和分子进化，在使用分子方法建立高等植物的进化史以及植物形态如何进化的新思路方面都有令人兴奋的工作。1993年以来，植物生物学有了重大的发现，包括第一个植物抗性基因的分离、植物成花诱导在不同物种中具有进化保守性的证明、植物基因组的合成以及近缘植物中主要形态差异基因的分离。通过专注于这些和其他植物发育生物学的最新进展，揭示了进化史或机制，我们的计划能够专注于一个智力连贯和具有挑战性的主题。学生和博士后应该从讲座和讨论的多学科基调中受益匪浅，因为他们倾向于强烈关注狭隘的研究项目。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.