2011 Dr. Richard E. Peter Biology Conference
Conference Schedule
Thursday March 17th, 2011
2:00-4:00 PM Poster Session*
Location: Biological Sciences Foyer
5:00-6:00 PM Keynote Lecture – Dr. Lacey Samuels
Location: BS M-145
Friday March 18th, 2011
9:00 AM – 4:15 PM Oral Presentations*
Location: BS B-121
5:00 – 6:00 PM Plenary Lecture – Dr. James Cahill
Location: BS M-145
6:15 – 7:30 PM – Awards and Free Pizza
Location: BioSci Graduate Student Lounge
8:00 PM – Mixer with Drink Specials
Location: Dewey’s Lounge and Eatery
*Refreshments and snacks will be provided
Dr. Richard E. Peter Biology Conference Keynote Lecture
Research Interest Group Host: Plant Biology
March 17th, 2011
5:00 PM
M-145 Biological Sciences Building
Dr. Lacey Samuels
Department of Botany
University of British Columbia
BUILDING A DIVERSE PLANT CELL WALL: HOW PLANT CELLS USE AN ARRAY OF EXPORT STRATEGIES TO PRODUCE THEIR EXTRACELLULAR MATRIX.
All plant growth, including agricultural and forestry production, requires cell wall synthesis. Despite its critical importance, there is a major gap in our understanding of cell wall biosynthesis: how are cell wall components, which are made inside the cell, exported to the outside of the cell to build a functional wall? For the polysaccharide components of the cell wall, the hundreds of Golgi stacks in the cell package and secrete the wall matrix. However, the plant cell wall also contains specialized functional domains where the polysaccharides are impregnated with other macromolecules, such as lignin in wood, or the waxy cuticle coating the plant surface. The export of lignin precursors to the secondary cell wall during wood formation can be tracked with TEM autoradiography, demonstrating a non-vesicular export mechanism. For export of lipids to the cuticle, Arabidopsis mutant analysis has identified the first components of the wax export system, two ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters of the ABCG subclass, as well as a GPI-anchored lipid transfer protein, that are required for wax export from the epidermis to the cell wall.
Dr. Richard E. Peter Biology Conference Plenary Lecture
March 18th, 2011
5:00 PM
M-145 Biological Sciences Building
Dr. James Cahill
Department of Biological Sciences
University of Alberta
THE FORAGING ANIMAL PLANT: THANK GOD I’M TENURED
Plants are useful, but boring. They feed us, provide us with building materials, and serve as ‘habitat’ for the more interesting and dynamic animals that live throughout the landscape. Who would go out and study plant movement and foraging? Where are the nature documentaries highlighting the complexity and diversity of plant behavior? Is the lack of public knowledge about the behavioral ecology of plants due to an actual lack of behavior expressed by plants?
Recent work in my lab, and others, suggest plants regularly display complex behaviors; including kin recognition, communication, active foraging strategies, and information integration. In this talk I will describe a breadth of behaviors exhibited by plants, with a particular focus on root foraging. Further, I will show have the behavioral patterns we find in plants are consistent with those predicted by existing theory on animal movement and behavior. In other words, though the proximate mechanisms by which plants and animals effect behavior are fundamentally different, the underlying causes and resulting patterns are not.