Conference on Arabidopsis Research

Organizers & Topics

Meeting Organizers
Arabidopsis
In years when it is held in the United States, the International Conference on Arabidopsis Research is organized by the North American Arabidopsis Steering Committee (NAASC). This committee, which was formed in response to the need for North American representation to the Multinational Arabidopsis Steering Committee (MASC), began its work in 1992 and was responsible for organizing the first Conference on Arabidopsis Research, in Ohio in 1993.

Since that time, the Conference has grown into an annual event, boasting almost 1200 participants and more than 850 submitted abstracts when it was held in Berlin, Germany, in 2004.
The NAASC is an elected body, made up of 6- 8 North American Arabidopsis researchers, elected for 4-year (4-conference) terms by the North American users of the Arabidopsis Newsgroup electronic bulletin board. The current make-up of the NAASC is:

Brenda Winkel-Shirley, Virginia Tech
Greg Copenhaver, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Philip Benfey, Duke University
Rob McClung, Dartmouth College
Judith Bender, Johns Hopkins University
Xing-Wang Deng, Yale University
Xue Mei Chen, University of California, Riverside
Joe Kieber, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Joanna Friesner, coordinator for NAASC/MASC

Session Topics
The preliminary schedule for the 17th International Conference on Arabidopsis Research: Genes and Phenotype includes fourteen sessions of oral presentations, three poster sessions, and two time slots for workshops. Included among the session topics are:

* Bioinformatics (Chris Town, TIGR)
*Systems Biology (Philip Benfey, Duke Univ.)
*Environment 1: Abiotic (Pill-Soon Song, Kumho Life & Environmental Science Laboratory, and Cheju National University, Korea)
*Environment 2: Biotic (Xinnian Dong, Duke Univ.)
*Genetic and Epigenetic Mechanisms (Judith Bender, Johns Hopkins Univ.)
*Natural Variation and Comparative Genomics (Annie Schmitt, Brown University)
*Development 1: Flower, Fertilization, Fruit, and Seed (Caroline Dean, John Innes Centre, UNITED KINGDOM)
*Development 2: Shoot and Root (Dominique Bergman, Stanford University)
*Metabolism (Harvey Millar, University of Western Australia, AUSTRALIA)
*Signaling (Ute Hoecker, University of Duesseldorf, GERMANY)
*Modeling/OtherSystems (Sue Wessler, University of Georgia)
*Cell Biology (Jiri Friml, Univ. of Tuebingen, GERMANY)
*Energy (Steven Rothstein, University of Guolph, CANADA)
Arabidopsis 2010 (Machi Dilworth, NSF)
*NAASC choices (Rob McClung, Dartmouth University)

*Session will include presentations by speakers invited by the meeting organizers, as well as presentations by speakers chosen by session chairs from submitted poster abstracts. Session chairs are listed in parentheses.