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Oomycete Community Meets by the Sea
Brett M. Tyler, Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing, Oregon State University, and coordinator of the Oomycete Molecular Genetics Research Collaboration Network, Brett. Tyler @ oregonstate. edu
Oomycetes are devastating pathogens of plants of importance to agriculture, horticulture, forests, and natural ecosystems. Some oomycetes are also destructive pathogens of aquatic animals and are increasingly damaging to aquaculture and aquatic ecosystems. Genomic and molecular genetic approaches have propelled oomycetes to the forefront of plant – microbe interaction research over the last 10 years. On March 10-12, the oomycete molecular genetics community( Oomycete Molecular Genetics Research Collaboration Network( OMGN); pmgn. vbi. vt. edu) held its annual meeting in Asilomar, California, organized by Mark Gijzen, John McDowell, Paul Morris, and Joel Shuman. With support from the U. S. National Science Foundation, a record 122 researchers attended from 14 countries. Major topics were effectors, genomics, evolution and population genetics, and oomycete biology. Highlights included keynote addresses from
Jeff Dangl and Sarah Grant on the interaction of effectors with Arabidopsis hub proteins; five talks on the ongoing issue of effector entry mechanisms from the Pieter Van West, Brett Tyler, and Shiv Kale labs; a report from Wenbo Ma on Phytophthora sojae effectors that suppress RNA silencing; talks from Richard Michelmore and Kurt Lamour suggesting that the pan genomes of Bremia lactucae and Phytophthora capsici may contain thousands of different RxLR effector genes; and identification of a longsought gene responsible for mefenoxam resistance in Phytophthora infestans by Steven Whisson. The OMGN meeting has a tradition of open dissemination via social media, especially Twitter, and this meeting generated a record 754 tweets from 10 attendees and 12 nonattendees( summarized at storify. com / KamounLab # stories). The 2014 OMGN meeting will be in Norwich, England, on July 3 – 5. n
IS-MPMI Signs on to Support the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment
In December 2012, the American Society for Cell Biology( ASCB), along with a group of scholarly journal editors and publishers, met in San Francisco to develop a set of recommendations to address the pressing need to improve the ways in which the output of scientific research is evaluated by funding agencies, academic institutions, and other parties. As a result of this effort, a worldwide initiative, covering all scholarly disciplines, is now under way to build support for the developed guidelines referred to as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment( DORA). More than 150 individuals and 80 organizations originally signed on to the declaration. During the recent IS- MPMI Board Meeting, the board approved including IS-MPMI as a supporting organization, agreeing to the adoption of the practices in research assessment as published at http:// am. ascb. org / dora. If you have any additional feedback or interest in this initiative, please contact IS-MPMI President Sophien Kamoun( Sophien. kamoun @ tsl. ac. uk). n
COMING EVENTS
July 23 – 26, 2013 5th European Plant Science Retreat( for Ph. D. students) Ghent University, Belgium www. psb. ugent. be /~ madub / EPSR5
August 10 – 14, 2013 APS-MSA Joint Meeting Austin, Texas, U. S. A. • www. apsnet. org / meet
August 25 – 30, 2013 10th International Congress of Plant Pathology( ICPP 2013) Beijing, China • www. icppbj2013. org
October 14 – 18, 2013 18th International Congress on Nitrogen Fixation Miyazaki, Japan • icnf18. brc. miyazaki-u. ac. jp
Include your meeting in IS-MPMI’ s printed and online event calendar. Submit online at www. ismpminet. org / meetings / calsubmit. asp.
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