June 1-3, 2011
The first CREATE-WoW Symposium took place from Wednesday evening, June 1 to Friday evening, June 3, 2011, on the UBC-Vancouver campus. The conference was largely oriented towards student and post-doctoral research and was organized by CREATE-WoW graduate students, Grant McNair, Caitlin Donnelly, and Gabriel Levesque-Tremblay.
Invited Speakers
- Simon Turner, University of Manchester
- Clint Chapple, Purdue University
- Taku Demura, RIKEN and NAIST
- Debra Mohnen, CCRC, University of Georgia
Group Photo of Symposium Attendees
| June 1 | |
| 16:00-18:30 | Registration, Michael Smith Building lobby |
| 18:30-20:30 | Reception, Beaty Biodiversity Museum, Blue Whale Exhibit |
| June 2 | |
| 8:45-9:00 | Welcoming remarks, Jim Kronstad, Director, Michael Smith Labs; Caitlin Donnelly, WoW graduate student |
| 9:00-10:00 | Keynote address, Simon Turner, University of Manchester, Analysis of carbohydrate biosynthesis in the Arabidopsis secondary cell wall |
| 10:00-10:30 | Coffee break |
| 10:30-10:50 | Hardy Hall, Molecular phenotyping of cell wall expansion in Arabidopsis inflorescence stems |
| 10:50-11:10 | Melissa Roach, Carbohydrate partitioning to wood development and cell wall biosynthesis in hybrid aspen |
| 11:10-11:30 | Lenka Plavcova, Homgalacturonans in the pit membrane annulus may influence xylem vulnerability to embolism |
| 11:30-11:50 | Bjoern Usadel, Seed mucilage synthesis: Screening for novel pectin mutants using an EMS population |
| 11:50-12:10 | Jonathan Griffiths, CESA-6 like cellulose synthases are involved in secondary cell wall biosynthesis and mucilage adherence properties in Arabidopsis seed epidermal cells |
| 12:10-13:30 | Lunch |
| 13:30-14:30 | Invited speaker, Debra Mohnen, CCRC, University of Georgia, Pectin biosynthesis: a surprisingly complex story with protein complexes, protein processing and multiple GAUT proteins |
| 14:30-14:50 | Miki Fujita, Cortical microtubules influence cellulose synthase movement and the proportion of crystalline cellulose in rapidly elongating cells |
| 14:50-15:10 | Oliver Corea, Specific Arabidopsis arogenate dehydratase isoforms are involved in biosynthesis of phenylalanine as a precursor for lignin |
| 15:10-15:30 | Coffee break |
| 15:30-15:50 | Vaibhav Srivastava, Expression of an oomycete chitin synthase gene in Arabidopsis and production of chitin in transformed plants |
| 15:50-16:10 | Teagen Quilichini, A perplexing biopolymer: how autofluorescence is uncovering clues to sporopollenin composition and assembly |
| 16:10-16:30 | Mathias Schuetz, Monolignol export and plant cell wall lignification |
| 16:30-18:30 | Poster session and barbecue |
| June 3 | |
| 9:00-10:00 | Invited speaker, Taku Demura, RIKEN and NAIST, Key transcription factors regulating secondary cell wall formation |
| 10:00-10:30 | Coffee break |
| 10:30-10:50 | Michael Deyholos, Requirement for matrix polysaccharides in G-type secondary wall development |
| 10:50-11:10 | Bjoern Usadel, Nucleotide sugar profiling reveals activation of the myo-inositol sugar pathway in carbon-starved Arabidopsis plants |
| 11:10-11:30 | Rebecca Smith, Good neighbours: the co-operative model during lignification |
| 11:30-11:50 | Sacha Escamez, Plant PIRIN proteins are working on walls by regulating the late xylem maturation |
| 11:50-12:10 | Catalin Voiniciuc, The Arabidopsis FLYING SAUCERS gene encodes a membrane protein required for connections to the cell wall |
| 12:10-13:30 | Lunch |
| 13:30-14:30 | Invited speaker, Clint Chapple, Purdue University, Is dwarfism an obligatory phenotype in lignin down-regulated plants? |
| 14:30-14:50 | Elahe Esfandiari, Identification and analysis of seed coat epidermal-specific promoter in Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica napus |
| 14:50-15:10 | Jean-Etienne Bassard, Investigations on protein-membrane and protein-protein interactions upstream of the phenylpropanoid pathway in Arabidopsis thaliana |
| 15:10-15:30 | Coffee break |
| 15:30-15:50 | Mihaela Voicu, The development of molecular resources for improving the fibre characteristics of industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) |
| 15:50-16:10 | Gabriel Levesque-Tremblay, Identification of seed coat mucilage cohesiveness mutant in Arabidopsis thaliana |
| 16:10-16:30 | Break (judges will meet to decide award winners) |
| 16:30 | Awards – best student poster and oral presentation |