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Copyright University of Cambridge

Abstract

Most inheritance is determined by the sequence of A,C,G and T in an organism’s DNA. Changes to this sequence by mutation affect the encoded proteins or gene expression. There is, however, another layer of information that is transmitted between cells and, in some instances, between generations. These systems are often referred to as “epigenetic” or soft inheritance. “Epigenetic” because they are based on an information content that is outside the DNA and “soft” because epigenetic effects can be established or lost more easily than mutations.

In my talk I will describe how research on viruses shed light on the involvement of RNA and DNA methylation in soft inheritance. It is a story that involves an immune system in plants, movement of RNA between cells and hybrid vigour. There are practical implications in agriculture and medicine and it raises questions about the mechanisms of evolution.

Speaker Profile

I am Professor of Botany at Cambridge University and one of my predecessors was J.S.Henslow – Darwin’s tutor. My present research is into the mechanisms of soft inheritance, as I will describe in my lecture, although in the past I have been interested in plant hormones, viruses and disease resistance. I was led into these subjects because one of my tutors recommended that, if I intended to follow a career in research, I should choose an important topic. In 1973 when I started my PhD, I thought that the most important topic in biology was understanding how genes are regulated. My various research interests since then have always involved different ways of looking at that problem.

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Copyright University of Cambridge

Prof Alistair Hetherington, University of Bristol
Stomata - key elements for the success of the vascular plants
Gatsby Plant Science Summer School 2015

Abstract
With the predicted increase in the global population one of the greatest challenges to face plant scientists in the 21st century is to breed new varieties of crop that are more nutritious, exhibit increased yields but require less water, fertilizers and pesticides. As if this were not a big enough challenge, these new varieties need to be able to flourish in the changing climatic conditions that we expect to experience over the remaining decades of this century. Fortunately there is much research going on in this area but we need to know a lot more. In this lecture Alistair Hetherington will describe how research on stomatal guard cells is revealing new molecular and cellular insights into how plants respond to changes in their environment and how insights from this research will help underpin breeding programmes for the next generation of crops.

Speaker Profile
Alistair’s research focuses on understanding how plants adapt to a changing environment. To investigate this question he works on the pores found of the surfaces of leaves known as stomata. These structures are important because they help to regulate transpiration and the uptake of CO2. The former is important because it impacts on nutrient supply to the aerial parts, leaf cooling and short-term responses to drought while the latter impacts on photosynthesis and dry matter accumulation. It turns out that changes in environmental parameters (light, CO2, relative humidity, temperature) control both the aperture of the stomatal pore and also the number of stomata that develop on the leaf surfaces. Accordingly, these cells are excellent models in which to investigate the cellular aspects of how plants respond to changes in the external environment.
Alistair received his BSc (1979) and PhD (1982) in Botany from the University of St Andrews. Following post-doctoral work in the University of Edinburgh he moved to the University of Lancaster in 1984 where he worked until moving to Bristol in 2006. He currently holds a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship. You can read a short article about Alistair published in Current Biology by following this link: http://bit.ly/1Agk418

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Copyright University of Cambridge

Prof John Christie, University of Glasgow.
Seeing the light: from plant growth to optogenetics.
Gatsby Plant Science Summer School 2015

Abstract
Plants need sunlight for photosynthesis in order to generate food. So it’s not too surprising to discover that plants can alter their growth to capture as much light as possible. One example is phototropism, the process by which plants grow in the direction of light. We all like to sunbathe, but for plants it's a question of survival. Consequently, plants have evolved a range of specialized photoreceptors to detect and respond to different colours of light. Understanding how these light-responsive proteins function to coordinate plant development is essential if we are to modulate growth for agronomic gain. Moreover, the ability of light to trigger photoreceptor activation in a rapid and synchronized way has also opened up exciting possibilities to artificially place biological processes under spatial and temporal control with unprecedented precision, offering new strategies for clinical therapies such as the restoration of neural function and vision.

Speaker Profile
Obtaining a degree in Biochemistry at the University of Glasgow first stimulated my interest in cellular signalling, such that I embarked on a PhD in Molecular Biology to investigate how UV/blue light regulates the expression of genes involved in flavonoid biosynthesis. I was particularly interested in understanding how proteins known as photoreceptors convert photons of light into molecular events that trigger a multitude of different physiological processes. At this time, little was known about the molecular basis of plant UV/blue light receptors. This fascination led me down an academic career path to uncover the molecular identity and photochemical properties of the photoreceptor proteins involved.

I am currently Professor of Photobiology and Deputy Head of the Institute of Molecular Cell and Systems Biology at the University of Glasgow. My research interests centre on using diverse approaches, ranging from biophysical to physiological, to understand how photosensory systems operate to shape plant growth and development. Our research has resulted in major advances in the field of photobiology, including the identification of the long sought after photoreceptor for phototropism and more recently the elusive plant UV-B photoreceptor. Our work also extends to developing new optogenetic tools to non-invasively track bacterial and viral infections and control neural processes by using light. I also serve on the editorial board for several plant science journals, contribute to scientific textbooks and will chair the 2016 Gordon Research Conference on Photosensory Receptors and Signal Transduction.

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Copyright University of Cambridge

Professor Sarah O'Connor, John Innes Centre
How do plants make anti-cancer drugs?
Gatsby Plant Science Summer School 2015

ABSTRACT
Plants are arguably the world\'s best chemists. All plants synthesise thousands of complicated molecules that they use to protect themselves from predators, attract pollinators and communicate with other plants. Thousands of years ago, humans realised that many of these plant-derived molecules also have a powerful impact on human health and well-being. Many molecules that have been isolated from plants are used to treat a variety of diseases in modern medicine. Unfortunately, these molecules are often produced by the plant in very small quantities. Additionally, some plants that produce high-value compounds are endangered, or cannot be easily cultivated. If we understand how the plants synthesise these molecules, we may be able to engineer more effective ways of producing these important compounds.
Recent advances in DNA sequencing now allow us, for the first time, to rapidly decode the complicated plant pathways that are responsible for the construction of these high-value chemicals. In this talk I’ll show how DNA sequence data can be used to elucidate the pathways of Madagascar Periwinkle, a medicinal plant that produces Oncovin and Velbe, compounds that are used in the clinic to treat a variety of cancers.

SPEAKER PROFILE:
I'm Professor of Biological Chemistry at the John Innes Centre, and my research focuses on understanding how plants make the complicated molecules that enable them to interact with the environment. In particular, I'm interested in identifying and understanding the enzymes that construct these complex molecules from simple building blocks.
After taking many chemistry courses in high school, and doing well in them, I decided to concentrate in Chemistry in university. This decision was probably also influenced by the fact that my father also taught high school chemistry. Early on as an undergraduate, I did research in a physical chemistry laboratory, only to realise that I had no aptitude for building and working with complicated instrumentation. I switched to a biological/organic chemistry laboratory where I worked on synthesising a compound involved in parasitic plant signalling, and loved it. This experience led me to consider a PhD in chemistry, where I focussed on biological chemistry. I chose a post doc where I did more work on enzyme mechanisms and this is where I became interested in how nature constructs complicated molecules.
https://www.jic.ac.uk/staff/Sarah-OConnor/Index.htm

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Copyright University of Cambridge

Professor Ottoline Leyser, CBE, FRS, Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge
Thinking like a vegetable- how plants decide what to do.
Gatsby Plant Science Summer School 2015.

Abstract
It is easy to assume that plants don’t do much, and many expressions for inactive, slovenly behaviour involve plant metaphors, such as the couch potato. However, plants are as busy of the rest of us, assessing their surroundings and changing their activity accordingly. Plants monitor a wide range of information from the environment. They combine information of multiple sorts, and respond in an appropriate way, balancing competing needs, such as whether to invest limited resources in roots or shoots. In animals a large part of this job is done by the nervous system, with the brain acting as a central processor for the information collected. In plants there is no brain, and the information processing is distributed across the plant body. Much of this is achieved through the action of hormone signals that move throughout the plant and interact to integrate local and systemic information. How these systems act to co-ordinate growth and development is coordinated across the plant body in this way, with no central control system, is an extremely interesting question in information processing. Furthermore, understanding these regulatory systems is essential to understand how they must be changed in order to optimise agricultural production.

Speaker profile

Ottoline Leyser is Professor of Plant Development and Director of the Sainsbury Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on understanding how plants adapt their growth and development to suit the environment in which they are growing. In particular she is interested in how plants balance and rebalance growth across their shoot systems and between their shoots and roots in response to changing nutrient availability.

Professor Leyser received her BA (1986) and PhD (1990) in Genetics from the University of Cambridge. After a period of post-doctoral research at Indiana University, she returned to the UK and took up a Lectureship at the University of York (1994), where she worked until moving to the Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge, in 2011. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Member of EMBO and a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. She was awarded a CBE in the 2009 New Year Honours list and the 2016 Genetics Society Medal.

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Copyright University of Cambridge

Professor David Salt, University of Aberdeen
Revealing Molecular Mechanisms of Plant Nutrition Using 'Big Data'
ABSTRACT: Understanding how organisms control their ionome, or mineral nutrient and trace element composition, will have a significant impact on both plant and human health. Furthermore, associating the genetic determinants that underlie natural ionomics variation, with the landscape of the individuals that carry these genotypes, will provide insight into the genetic basis of adaptation. This information will lay the foundation for better matching of crop plant varieties with their soil environments to maximize sustainable gains in crop productivity. We have coupled the variation present in Arabidopsis thaliana with high-throughput mineral nutrient and trace element profiling to determine the biological significance of connections between an organisms genome and its ionome. We have used positional cloning, DNA microarray based approaches, QTL and genome-wide association mapping, and whole genome re-sequencing to identify genes that control the ionome. Association of natural alleles of these genes with the landscape is also revealing the genetic architecture underlying adaptation to the environment. We have developed a publicly accessible web-based digital HUB called the ionomicsHUB (iHUB) accessed at www.ionomicshub.org. The iHUB contains ionomic data on over 183,000 A. thaliana plants, including plants with defined knockouts in over 3,000 different genes. Since its inception the iHUB has had over 11,000 users from 103 different countries.
SUGGESTED READING:
Hosmani PS et al., (2013). Dirigent domain-containing protein is part of the machinery required for formation of the lignin-based Casparian strip in the root. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 110:14498-503.
Chao DY et al., (2013). Polyploids exhibit higher potassium uptake and salinity tolerance in Arabidopsis. Science. 341:658-9.
Baxter I et al., (2010). A coastal cline in sodium accumulation in Arabidopsis thaliana is driven by natural variation of the sodium transporter AtHKT1;1. PLoS Genet. 6(11):e1001193.
Salt DE et al., (2008). Ionomics and the study of the plant ionome. Annu Rev Plant Biol. 59:709-33.
SPEAKER PROFILE:
David E Salt, FRSE
Professor and Sixth Century Chair of Plant Science
University of Aberdeen, Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, UK
Professor Salt completed his Ph.D focusing on uncovering the mechanisms of evolved copper tolerance in Yellow Money Flower (Mimulus gutattus) at Liverpool University, UK (1988). Professor Salt also has a B.Sc in Biochemistry (University of North Wales, Bangor, UK, 1984), and an M.Sc in Computer Science (Hallam University, UK, 1985). Professor Salt left the UK in 1990 for the USA where he held faculty positions at Rutgers University, Northern Arizona University, and Purdue University. Since Jan 2011 Professor Salt has held the Sixth Century Chair in Plant Science at the University of Aberdeen and is the founder and Co-Director of the Centre for genome Enabled Biology and Medicine. Professor Salt has a long term interest in understanding the function of genes and gene networks that regulate the mineral nutrient and trace element composition (aka ionome) of plants, and how variation in these gene systems allows plants to adapt to their local soil environment. This work has led to the new research paradigm of ionomics which involves coupling high-throughput elemental profiling with bioinformatics, genomics and genetics. Salt has also pioneered the development of e-research environments designed to deliver online high-throughput ionomic data to the research community to stimulate progress and broader research participation.

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Copyright University of Cambridge

Prof Giles Oldroyd, John Innes Centre.
Engineering the nitrogen symbiosis for small holder farmers in Africa
Gatsby Plant Science Summer School 2014
ABSTRACT: Western agricultural systems are reliant on the application of inorganic nitrogen fertilisers to greatly enhance yield. However, production and application of nitrogen fertilisers account for a significant proportion of fossil fuel usage in food production and the major source of pollution from agriculture.
Prof Giles Oldroyd studies the mechanisms by which some species of plants are capable of forming beneficial interactions with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which provide a natural source of nitrogen for plant growth. A long-term aim of this research is to reduce agricultural reliance on nitrogen fertilisers, and he currently heads an international programme funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to explore the feasibility of engineering nitrogen-fixing cereals.
In this lecture, filmed at the Gatsby Plant Science Summer School 2014 (for 1st year undergraduates from UK universities), Prof Giles Oldroyd discusses the potential to engineer a symbiotic signalling pathway in cereals in order to transfer the capability to recognise nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

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Copyright University of Cambridge

Prof Johnathan Napier, Rothamsted Research. Fish oils and seeds for healthy foods. Gatsby Plant Science Summer School 2014
ABSTRACT: Omega-3 fatty acids - obtained from fish oils - are vital for human health, but there is no sustainable production system in place for them. Fisheries are not run sustainably, and the marine environment is suffering from pollution which can accumulate in fish. Unfortunately, popular plant oils such as flax and linseed lack the bioactive omega-3 fatty acids that humans need. We need an alternative and sustainable source of these important compounds to tackle the health issues of the 21st century.
Prof Johnathan Napier works at Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire, a government-funded insitution and the oldest agricultural research station in the world. He and his group have been working to engineer transgenic plants to accumulate omega-3 fatty acids. The primary producers of these long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFAs) are algae, which are taken up by the wild fish in the food chain. Johnathan has now engineered both model plants and crop species with the algal biosynthetic pathway for LC-PUFAs. Using lipidomics, the researchers identified metabolic bottlenecks in the transgenic pathway, ultimately resulting in the breakhrough production of a transgenic oilseed crop which contains up to 30% omega-3 LC-PUFAs in its seed oil.

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Copyright University of Cambridge

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Professor Stephen Long, University of Illinois: Food, Feed and Fuel from Crops under Global Atmospheric Change. Could we have it all in 2030?

Gatsby Plant Science Summer School Lecture 2014

Abstract
Demand for our major crops is expected to rise 30% by 2030, while we look increasingly to croplands for energy as well as food and feed. This is at a time when the rate of increase in yield seen over the past 60 years is stagnating and when global change may be placing yield increase into reverse. New computationally guided biotechnological approaches are providing opportunities to overcome these limitations. Simultaneously emergent sustainable energy crops could be produced at scale using land unsuited to food crops. These opportunities to achieve 2030 goals, and their scientific base will be explained. Yet, societal and policy acceptance of these opportunities is likely our greatest barrier to having it all in 2030.

Speaker profile:
Steve Long is Gutgesell Endowed University Professor of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois, and a Fellow of the Royal Society (London). He obtained his BS in Agricultural Botany at the University of Reading, UK and Ph.D. in Plant Sciences at Leeds University. His research has concerned maximizing crop photosynthetic productivity from the molecular to the field level, both via theoretical modeling and field scale experimental manipulations. His group has developed dynamic and steady-state models for analyzing and guiding improvement of crop photosynthetic efficiency. He has identified the most productive plants so far known from the wild and much of his work has focused on identifying the attributes that set these plants apart. He founded the SoyFACE facility, the largest of its type, providing open air analysis of how crops will respond to global atmospheric and climatic change. He was co-founder of 400 strong Berkeley-Illinois-BP Energy Biosciences Institute and today is Director of RIPE, a multi-national Gates Foundation supported project, that is increasing photosynthetic productivity of key food crops. He is Chief and Founding Editor of Global Change Biology and a Fellow of the Royal Society.

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Copyright University of Leeds

Dr Saskia Hogenhout, John Innes Centre
Insect vectors and vector-borne disease agents of plants - the surprising dynamics of interactions among three unrelated organisms
Plenary lecture sponsored by The British Society for Plant Pathology

Gatsby Plant Science Summer School Lecture 2013

Abstract
Insects are the main consumers of plants and are responsible for an estimated 15% of global crop losses. In addition, particularly sap-feeding insects such as aphids, whiteflies and leafhoppers, transmit a variety of pathogens and hence may be viewed as the mosquitoes of plants. Remarkably, more than 80% of the insect species are regarded as specialists with less than 10% feeding on plants in more than 3 plant families. Thus, most plants are resistant to most insect herbivores. Research in my laboratory has demonstrated that insects modulate plant processes to efficiently colonize plants. We have identified virulence proteins (effectors) in aphid saliva that promote aphid colonization on plants. Intriguingly insect-vectored pathogens often assist in the modulation of plant processes to the benefit of both the insect vectors and the pathogens. The obligate leafhopper-transmitted phytoplasmas have effectors that promote leafhopper colonization thereby increasing the chance of phytoplasma transmission to other plants. Phytoplasma effector protein SAP11 destabilizes TCP transcription factors resulting in increased stem production and altered leaf development and reduced jasmonate (JA) synthesis, while effector protein SAP54 destabilizes MADS-box transcription factors leading to the conversion of flowers into leaves and delayed plant senescence. Leafhoppers feed and lay eggs on green plant tissues and are sensitive to JA. Both phytoplasma effectors promote leafhopper feeding and reproduction contributing to a 60% increase in the number of insect vectors on phytoplasma-infected plants. Thus, both insects and insect-transmitted pathogens produce effectors that promote insect colonization on plants. Overall this research will lead to a greater understanding of plant defence mechanisms to insect herbivores that can be used towards approaches to improve crop resistance to insects.

Speaker profile
Saskia Hogenhout’s research is aimed at gaining a better understanding of the molecular basis of plant-microbe-insect interactions. Her PhD thesis research (Wageningen University and Research Centre, The Netherlands) focused on molecular aspects of luteovirus-aphid interactions (1994-1999). SH became an independent Project Leader (Assistant Professor) at The Ohio State University (OSU), USA, after receiving her PhD degree in 1999. At OSU, she started new research projects on leafhopper and planthopper transmission of phytoplasmas and rhabdoviruses, and obtained tenure as Associate Professor in 2005. SH commenced her Project Leader position at JIC, UK, in June 2007 where she received tenure in October 2012. She received the Derrick Edward Award for outstanding research in mycoplasmology comprising global research on human, animal and plant-associated mycoplasma pathogens. SH’s discoveries include phytoplasma virulence factors (effectors), which interact with conserved plant transcription factors to promote the vegetative growth of plants, thereby encouraging phytoplasma and insect vector colonization. She also established genomic analysis tools for aphids that are used towards understanding the molecular basis of plant-insect interactions and improving plant resistance to insects. SH has established many fruitful collaborations within the UK and worldwide.