QMB Plants Speakers

Invited Speakers

Saskia Hogenhout
Talk title: "Phytoplasma enhances insect vector reproduction by directly manipulating plant development and defense hormone biosynthesis"

Saskia’s research focus is on the interaction between plants, insects, and the pathogens that share these two hosts. Phytoplasmas and rhabdoviruses replicate in both plants and insects resulting in either beneficial or pathogenic impacts. The Hogenhout laboratory aims to understand how the conserved pathways of plants or insects are manipulated by phytoplasmas and rhabdoviruses resulting in efficient spread in both hosts. The research is by nature interdisciplinary and uses bioinformatics, genomics, functional genomics, biochemistry, and microscopy to identify and characterize pathogen and host proteins involved in the interactions.

After completing her PhD at Wageningen University and Research Centre, The Netherlands, Saskia moved to the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, USA. Saskia is now based at The John Innes Centre, UK where she is a project leader within the Disease and Stress Biology department.

www.jic.ac.uk/staff/saskia-hogenhout

Professor Sophien Kamoun
Talk title:"Functional and evolutionary dynamics of Phytophthora effectors".

Sophien Kamoun is the Head of The Sainsbury Laboratory, John Innes Centre, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, United Kingdom. Sophien attended the University of California at Davis, where he received his Ph.D. in Genetics in 1991. He then was a postdoctoral fellow at the NSF Center for Engineering Plants for Resistance Against Pathogens, UC Davis, and at the Department of Phytopathology, Wageningen University, Netherlands. In 1998, Dr. Kamoun was appointed assistant professor of oomycete molecular genetics at the Ohio State University, Department of Plant Pathology, Wooster campus, and was promoted to the rank of associate professor in 2002 and professor in 2006.

At the Sainsbury Laboratory, Sophien continues to exploit genomics resources to improve understanding of plant pathosystems, unravel novel processes and concepts in plant-microbe interactions, and devise original disease management strategies based on the gained knowledge. Throughout his career, Dr. Kamoun made a number of significant contributions to the science of molecular plant pathology that have been described in over 110 journal articles. He pioneered the use of functional genomics strategies that link plant pathogen sequences to phenotypes and is credited with discovering several effector families from pathogenic oomycetes. Dr. Kamoun has also led community efforts to sequence and analyze the genome of the Irish potato famine pathogen Phytophthora infestans and continues to be actively involved in a variety of pathogenomics projects.

www.tsl.ac.uk/profile/sophien-kamoun.asp

Professor Simon Gilroy
Talk title:"Abiotic stress and development: links through Ca2+ and ROS-dependent signaling cassettes".

Simon Gilroy is a Professor of Botany in the Botany Department of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He gained his BA and MA (Cantab) in Botany from the University of Cambridge, UK (1984) and successfully completed his PhD in Plant Biochemistry with the University of Edinburgh, UK (1987).

Professor Gilroy, along with his team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison is interested in how plants sense and respond to their environment and how these signals regulate plant development particularly at the cellular level. Research interests include such pertinent plant developmental questions; such as how do roots and shoots sense and respond to gravity and touch stimuli and how does the root regulate its growth? His interest in plant development and in particular plant cellular signalling is evident via the publication of over 25 peer-reviewed papers in the last three years alone gaining an expertise in the application of combined advanced microscopy approaches such as confocal microscopy with biochemistry and molecular biology to address these research targets.

www.botany.wisc.edu/gilroy/Site/Welcome.html

Professor Karam Singh
Talk title:"Plant resistance to sap-sucking insect pests and soil borne fungal pathogens.".

Karam Singh initially joined CSIRO Plant Industry as a Queen Elizabeth II Research Fellow before taking up an Assistant/Associate Professorship at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA, in 1991. He returned to CSIRO Plant Industry in 1999 to establish a plant biotechnology group in Western Australia. Professor Singh was awarded a Bachelor of Science with First Class Honours from Edinburgh University, United Kingdom, 1981 and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, USA, 1986. He is an inaugural recipient of the Newton Turner Career Award (2008) and has served on a number of boards.

Professor Karam Singh holds a joint (50:50) appointment between CSIRO and University of Western Australia (UWA) and is the Program Leader of the Mediterranean Crops and Pastures Group of CSIRO Plant Industry, and Winthrop Professor of Molecular Plant Pathology and Crop Genomics in The UWA Institute of Agriculture.

Karam Singh’s research interests include a long-standing interest in the regulation of plant gene expression, with a major focus in recent years on the transcriptional control of plant stress/defence gene expression; the use of model plant systems (Arabidopsis and Medicago truncatula) to analyse plant responses to stress; where he focuses on stress responses in roots and the isolation of genes that are important for defence against sap-sucking insects and fungal pathogens and crop genomics with a focus on lupins, the major grain legume grown in Australia.

Professor Jan Marc
Talk title:"Phospholipase-cytoskeleton interactions in environmental stress signalling networks.".

Plants are continuously exposed to a variety of environmental signals, both above ground and below. Being sessile, plants have evolved complex cellular and molecular mechanisms that allow them to continuously exploit beneficial signals and adjust to adverse signals in order to optimize their growth and development. The signalling mechanisms generally involve series of interacting molecules that operate in downstream cascades, starting with the interception of signals at cell surface, eliciting metabolic adjustments in the cytoplasm, inducing cytoskeletal remodeling, and regulating gene expression. Research in my laboratory aims at elucidating this mechanism.

Professor Barry Pogson
Talk title:"A New Chloroplast - Nuclear Signalling Pathway Functions in High Light and Drought Responses in Arabidopsis".

Barry Pogson completed his PhD in 1991 at Macquarie University and then undertook a postdoctoral fellowship with CSIRO Division of Horticulture. He moved to the USA in 1994 working as a postdoc with Dean DellaPenna at Arizona and Nevada before taking an Assistant Professorship at Arizona State University in 1997. He moved to ANU late 1999. 

Evidence of the impact of his research into carotenoids, photosynthesis and drought are awards, seven articles in the top 1% in their field for citations, and a series of grants, most notably the ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Energy Biology. In 2008 he joined The Plant Cell Editorial Board and co-organised the Boden Conference on Plant Energy and Water Productivity. He is the Chair of the 2013 International Arabidopsis Conference, which will be held in Australia.

The overarching theme of our research is to determine the controls and regulators of chloroplast function.  This includes discovery of proteins involved in epigenetics, RNA metabolism, chloroplast-nuclear signalling, carotenoid biosynthesis, photosynthesis, drought and chloroplast biogenesis. A key to our research is to apply cutting edge molecular and biochemical techniques in combination with whole plant physiology to build a picture from gene to crop.The approach utilizes deep sequencing, microarrays, promoter-reporter gene fusions, HPLC and GC-MS to identify novel genes and signalling pathways in Arabidopsis (related to Canola), wheat, avocado and canola.

Professor Peter Waterhouse
Talk title:"Roles of double-strand RNA binding motif (drb) proteins in microRNA regulation and viral infection. ".

Professor Peter Waterhouse is internationally recognised for his groundbreaking research on plant viruses, and he led the way in uncovering the mechanism, roles and applications of post-transcriptional gene silencing in plants, also termed RNA interference (RNAi). Small RNAs (sRNA) play a number of key roles in the development of plants and animals, such as providing protection against viruses, regulating and protecting chromosomes, perceiving the environment, and regulating developmental transitions. Professor Waterhouse is studying the currently obscure sRNA pathways that play fundamental roles critical to the development and health of plants. Many of the pathways have essential counterparts in animals and may have implications for medical research. His research program aims to deliver technologies for silencing signals to plants to improve agronomic traits; inserting synthetic microRNAs into plants to alter plant architecture; and altering DNA structure to affect long-term agronomic traits. Dr Waterhouse completed his PhD in plant virology at the University of Dundee and the Scottish Crop Research Institute. He has received several awards, including the International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium Thomson ISI Award as the CSIRO researcher with the most highly cited papers between 1998 and 2003, the Victor Chang Medal (2002) and the CSIRO Chairman's Medal for his work in the gene silencing/RNAi field (2005).

In 2003, Dr Waterhouse was named in The Bulletin's 'Top Ten Smartest Scientists in Australia'. He was the CSIRO Representative on the Prime Minister's Science and Engineering Council - Gene Technology Working Group. He has numerous patents covering the applications of his discoveries.
In 2007 he won the prestigious Prime Minister's Prize for Science, and in 2009, he was elected as a fellow to the Australian Academy of Science.

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