"Plant Genomics and Beyond" Conference 2009
"Plant Genomics and beyond" intends to bring together world leaders, scientists and students interested in plant genomics. The conference will bridge basic scientific issues such as evolution, cell signaling, transcription, proteomics and post-translational controls, to very applied topics that form the basis of modern agriculture, including domestication, polyploidization and heterosis. An outlook into future concepts of plant genomics will be given by discussing advanced concepts of systems biology, comparative genomics and bioinformatics.
In our rapidly changing world, new challenges appear almost on a daily basis, including the global changes of the conditions on our planet or the shrinking oil reserves. Several of these challenges directly target our agricultural system, resulting in increasing demands for a higher food production for a growing population or the replacement of fossile fuels with biofuels. However, at the same time, land and water supplies are also becoming limiting and give rise to an explosive political mixture of hunger and social unrest. Science cannot solve many of these problems, and especially not the political ones, but science can provide the knowledge and the means to reduce the losses in agricultural production that are due to biotic and abiotic stresses caused by pathogens or drought. Most progress in producing pathogen resistant or drought tolerant crops comes from applying knowledge from the developing field of plant genomics to these challenges. Therefore, we felt it is a timely event to bring together the world experts in plant genomics and discuss the latest results and the future developments in this exciting area of plant biology. The meeting is planned to be held at the URGV Plant Genomics Institute in Evry, which is a subsurb of Paris and the place where plant genomics was initiated in France almost 10 years ago. The topics selected will bridge basic scientific concepts of evolution, cell signaling, transcription, proteomics and post-translational controls to very applied issues that form the basis of our agriculture during the last several thousand years, touching on domestication, polyploidization and heterosis. Finally, we also included several topis dealing with how the future of plant genomics will most likely develop. Therefore, the most advanced concepts of systems biology, comparative genomics and bioinformatics will be discussed.
The event will take place from July 5th through July 8th in Evry, France. More information can be found on the event website : http://www.plant-genomics.org