Scientific Program

The detailed scientific program of the 4th Conference of the PSEPB.

Opening Lecture – Enrico Coen: “Development of shape in plants”.

Session 1: Plant structure and development

Organizer: Beata Zagórska-Marek:

• Cris Kuhlemeier: “Quantitative approaches to plant development”
• David Holloway: “Pattern selection in plants: coupling chemical dynamics to surface growth in 3D”
• Joanna Szymanowska-Pułka: “Does a developing lateral root in Arabidopsis thaliana obey the growth tensor rules?”
• Welcome party.

Keynote lecture – Jonathan D. G. Jones: “New approaches to understanding and manipulating pathogen virulence and host resistance”. Lecture sponsored by Biochemical Society.

Session 2: Plant–microbial Interactions

Organizers: Jacek Hennig, Katarzyna Turnau:

• Kari Saikkonen: “Dissecting grass-endophyte literature”
• Dierk Scheel: “Plant-microbe interaction in the rhizosphere – a metabolomic approach”
• Magdalena Wiśniewska: “Relationships between arbuscular mycorrhiza development, NtEXPA5 expression and microtubules rearrangement in Nicotiana tabacum L. mycorrhized roots
• Michał Jasiński: “Full-size ABC transporters from the ABCG subfamily in Medicago truncatula”
• Mirosław Sobczak: “Development of syncytia induced by potato cyst nematode in roots of transgenic plants with silenced expression of susceptibility genes”
• Sabina Zuzga: “Specific phosphorylation of conserved eukaryotic protein SGT1 is an essential element of plant pathogen defense”.

Session 3: Mitochondria and chloroplasts in cell metabolism

Organizers: Grzegorz Jackowski, Anna Rychter:

• Christine H. Foyer: “Relationships between mitochondrial respiratory pathways and photosynthesis in the control of plant growth and defence”
• Allan Rasmusson: “Mitochondrial control of cellular redox”
• Roberto Bassi: “On the mechanism of regulation of excess energy dissipation in Plant Photosystem II”
• Olga Avercheva: “Photophosphorylation and CF1-ATPase activity in Brassica chinensis L. plants grown under light-emitting diodes and different light intensity”
• Anthony Gandin: “Alternative respiratory pathway: A way to reduce imbalance between source and sink activity in the sink-limited plant Erythronium americanum”
• Marek Szklarczyk: “Searching for molecular factors associated with homeotic male sterility caused by the Brassica nigra cytoplasm in cauliflower”.

Session 4: Stress tolerance in plants

Organizer: Zbigniew Miszalski:

• Jane Parker: “Regulation of plant resistance to host-adapted pathogens”
• Philip M. Mullineaux: “Finding regulatory genes at the interface between abiotic and biotic stress”
• Karin Krupinska: “Control of plant senescence and stress responses by chloroplasts – involvement of dual- targeted Whirly1”
• Stanisław Karpiński: “Evidence for light wavelength-specific systemic photoelectrical signalling and cellular light memory in Arabidopsis thaliana”
• Pierre Dizengremel: “Implication of metabolic-dependent changes on reducing power in the determination of ozone risk threshold for higher plants”
• Geert Potters: “Stress-induced morphogenic responses in plants: plants deal with stress in their own time”
• Kinga Kłodawska: “Effect of temperature on carotenoid content and composition in cyanobacterium Synechocystis PCC6803”
• Ewa Niewiadomska: “Hydrogen peroxide generation in leaf veins”.

Session 5: Structural and functional organization of plant genome

Organizers: Artur Jarmołowski, Andrzej K. Kononowicz:

• Ingo Schubert: “Interphase chromosome organization and its dynamics in plants”
• Manuel Echeverria: “Characterisation of AtNUFIP, a novel gene controlling the biogenesis of small nucleolar RNAs, sheds new light on RNA methylation and its impact on plant development”
• John W. S. Brown: “Regulation of plant gene expression by alternative splicing”
• Daniel Kierzkowski: “Protein-protein interactions within cap-binding complex (CBC) and with pri-miRNA processing machinery components in living Arabidopsis thaliana cells
• Konstantin V. Kiselev: “Stability, nucleotide sequences and expression of the rolC and nptII genes in 15-years old cell cultures of Panax ginseng”
• Bożena Kolano: “Cytogenetic analysis of Chenopodium album aggregate”.

Session 6: Mutants in developmental and metabolic studies

Organizers: Iwona Ciereszko, Iwona Szarejko:

• Soren K. Rasmussen: “Biosynthesis and accumulation of inositol phosphates in developing seeds”
• Andris Druka: “Exploiting induced variation to dissect yield related traits in barley”
• Hermann Bauwe: “Mutants in photorespiration research”
• Hanna Jańska: “Toward the functions of plant mitochondrial proteases using reverse genetic approach”
• Mirosław Kwaśniewski: “Global analysis of root hair morphogenesis transcriptome using wild type/root hair mutant system in barley”
• Dorota Kwiatkowska : “How organ boundaries are formed: a case of cuc2 cuc3 mutant of Arabidopsis thaliana”.

Session 7: Secondary metabolites as pharmaceutics and nutraceutics

Organizer: Ewa Łojkowska:

• Fredric Bourgaud: “Functional characterization of new P450s involved in plant furanocoumarins biosynthesis, and possible applications in a metabolic engineering approach”
• Grzegorz Węgrzyn: “Genistein a natural isoflavone with a potential for treatment of genetic diseases”
• Anna Staszków: “New isoflavone glycoconjugates identified in Mexican lupine species”
• Irina Tanasienko: “Agrobacterium mediated genetic transformation of barley (Hordeum vulgare) by human lactoferrin gene
• Anna Ihnatowicz: “Natural variation in Arabidopsis thaliana as a tool for identifying differentially expressed genes involved in the elicitation process of pharmacologically active plant secondary metabolites”.

Session 8: Plant membranes

Organizers: Kazimierz Strzałka, Kazimierz Trębacz:

• Rainer Hedrich: “Stomatal control of plant water status”
• Nava Moran: “Regulation of channels by phosphoinositides in the plasma membrane”
• Wiesław I. Gruszecki: “Light-driven molecular regulation mechanisms in LHCII”
• Susann Schaller: “Influence of thylakoid lipids on the de-epoxidation of violaxanthin associated with the photosystem II light-harvesting complex (LHCII)”
• Anna Smirnova: “Spatiotemporal changes of membrane potential during pollen activation and tube growth”
• Małgorzata Lange: “A possible role of CsNAR2 in nitrate uptake in cucumber (Cucumis sativus)”
• 19.00 – Conference dinner.

Keynote lecture – Ottoline Leyser: “Long range signalling in the control of shoot branching”. Lecture sponsored by Biochemical Society.

Session 9: Integrating plant functions via signaling molecules – molecular mechanisms

Organizers: Halina Gabryś, Przemysław Wojtaszek:

• Gwyneth C. Ingram: “Signalling in epidermal growth control”
• Viktor Żarsky: “Small GTPases effectors in plant cell morphogenesis”
• Ewa Krzywińska: “SnRK2’s cellular partners: identification and characterization”
• Przemysław Malec: “COP1 complex and COP9 signalosome (CSN) regulate the chlorophyll biosynthesis in Arabidopsis”
• Jon Hughes: “Phytochrome 3D structures and functions”
• Steven Neill: “Nitric oxide and hydrogen peroxide signalling”.

Closing ceremony.

Presentations of sponsoring companies

September 22

• PRECOPTIC. Wojciech Staniszewski: “Confocal imaging of living objects”
• LOT-ORIEL. Andreas Bergner, Agnieszka Kowalczyk: “Innovation & new standards for life science”.

September 23

• MP BIOCHEMICALS. Miodrag Micic: “New solutions for tissue processing”
• APPLIED BIOSYSTEMS. Denes Szilassy: “SOLiD3 Plus: A highly sensitive and accurate hypothesis-free approach in global transcriptome and genome analysis – an NGS technology accessible to any lab”.

Accompanying persons program

All registered accompanying persons are invited to participate in following tours (costs included in the registration fee, conference badges obligatory):

• Sightseeing of the Jagiellonian University Museum (Collegium Maius; guided tour in English). Collegium Maius, situated at the corner of St. Anna and Jagiellońska Streets, is the oldest university edifice in Poland
• Sightseeing of the Wawel Royal Castle and the Wawel Royal Cathedral (guided tour in English)
• The Old City of Kraków walking tour (Wawel Hill, The Royal Route – Kanonicza and Grodzka Streets, Main Market Square, Collegium Maius courtyard).