JOINT ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
American Society of Plant Biologists and the Sociedad Mexicana de Bioquímica Rama: Bioquímica y Biología Molecular de Plantas

Mérida, known for its architecture as “The White City,” greened last June as nearly 1,000 plant biologists convened for the first-ever joint meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists and the Sociedad Mexicana de Bioquímica.

¡Vamos a México!

Meeting in Mexico made Plant Biology 2008 a truly international event. Participants attended from more than 40 countries, including eight in Latin America. “The goodwill that has been built here as a result of having the meeting in Mexico is invaluable, and that is going to have a long-term payoff,” noted Richard Sayre of Ohio State University, who collaborates with researchers from around the world.

“The meeting was a success because many more Mexicans attended” than in past years, said Luis Herrera-Estrella, this year’s Perspectives of Science Leaders speaker and professor of plant engineering at the Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados of the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City. “It is easier to form collaborations when researchers from the United States and Europe come to Mexico,” he added. Federico Sánchez, from the Instituto de Biotecnología, UNAM, Mexico and a meeting organizer, was pleased. “I witnessed, overall, opportunity amongst the Latin-American community—a true enthusiasm to hear and meet the real person behind a renowned name, or the rewarding thrill to discuss science with the author of a favorite article,” he began. “This has been the great outcome of this particular ASPB meeting.”

Award Winners

ASPB President Rob McClung opened up the meeting by honoring winners of the 2008 awards. This year, the Society honored five outstanding graduate students with the ASPB–Pioneer Hi-Bred International Graduate Student Prize. This award recognizes students conducting graduate research on important commodity crops. Colleen Dougherty and Michael A. Grillo, both at Michigan State University; Tracie Hennen-Bierwagen of Iowa State University; Charles “Chip” Hunter III of the University of Florida; and Ajay Sandhu from the University of Nebraska were recognized for their innovative work.

The Early Career Award was granted to Ping He of Massachusetts General Hospital, a creative young scientist conducting pioneering work in many different areas of plant biology. Tsuneyoshi Kuroiwa from Rikkyo University in Tokyo was honored with the Charles Reid Barnes Life Membership Award. Corresponding Membership awards, which honor meritorious plant biologists from outside the United States, went to Chu-Yung Lin of National Taiwan University, Federico Sánchez at the Instituto de Biotecnología, UNAM, Mexico, and Alessandro Vitale from the Istituto di Biologia e Biotecnologia Agraria in Italy.Daniel Bush (Colorado State University), Jerry Cohen (University of Minnesota), Sabeeha Merchant (University of California, Los Angeles), and Jack Priess (Michigan State University) were all recognized for their long-term contributions to plant biology and service to the Society with the Fellow of ASPB award, first granted at the 2007 meeting.

The Charles F. Kettering Award was given to Robert E. Blankenship of Washington University in recognition of his pioneering work in photosynthesis. Steven Huber, from the University of Illinois, was recognized for his work on photosynthesis and carbon and nitrogen metabolism with the Lawrence Bogorad Award.

The Charles Albert Shull Award was given to Sheng Luan for his outstanding work at the University of California, Berkeley. The Stephen Hales Prize was awarded to Peter Quail, from the University of California, Berkeley, in honor of his pioneering work on phytochrome. Luan and Quail will share their work with attendees of the 2009 meeting in Hawaii.

Following the awards ceremony, last year’s Hales and Shull award winners kicked off the first of a series of engaging major symposia. Samuel S. Zeeman, recipient of the 2007 Shull Award, discussed his lab’s recent work on how starch granules are synthesized and degraded. Sarah Hake, the 2007 Hales Prize winner, presented her group’s work on abduction–adduction axial patterning and cell fate in maize leaf development.

Perspective of Science Leaders Lecture

An annual highlight of the meeting is the Perspectives of Science Leaders lecture. This year, Luis Herrera-Estrella presented an especially geographically relevant talk, “Transgenic Maize in a Center of Diversity: Friends or Foes?” A pioneer of Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, Herrera-Estrella gave a brief history of the development of transgenic crops, highlighting the case of golden rice and the potential for drought-tolerant crops. He went on to detail the controversy associated with biotechnology, specifically transgenic maize, which has been an especially sensitive issue in its center of domestication, Mexico. Herrera-Estrella called the technology “an essential tool for plant science” and expressed the hope that his home country will move to embrace the potential of biotechnology for crop improvement.

Topics for the Tropics

Maize remained a popular topic of discussion in the first of the three major symposia that focused on important crops from the Americas, including maize, Solanaceae species such as tomato and potato, and tropical crops such as cassava and coffee.

The Maize Biology symposium was co-organized by Sarah Hake and Jean Philippe Vielle Calzada and was widely cited as a 2008 meeting highlight. According to Hake, timeliness and location were important factors in the decision to organize the symposium. “The other important ingredient is the very nature of maize, which has a story in its domestication and genetics and which serves as a pivotal organism for other important grasses,” Hake said. “The recent sequencing of the maize genome also means that maize will become very accessible to many people, which is our greatest hope.”

“It was a great session,” said Esther van der Knaap of the symposium. “From the archeology to the developmental mechan-ism of inflorescence structure, the talks covered the whole range. And since maize was domesticated here, what better place than here to talk about maize?” Roisin McGarry agreed: “The presenters put together huge volumes of research into a very cogent story.”

Although she works on Arabidopsis, McGarry found the following day’s symposium on Solanaceae species to be equally engaging. “I find the talks about other model systems very exciting,” she explained. “Arabidopsis is very specialized, and for a meeting this broad, talking about other crops draws in a diverse group of people.” Luis Herrera-Estrella concurred: “Having the meeting here somehow pushed the meeting to include other crops and shifted the focus a little away from Arabidopsis.”

McGarry’s colleague at Texas Tech University, Brian Ayre, shared her enthusiasm for the focus on a variety of model systems. “There are certain model systems out there, such as Arabidopsis, maize, and tomato, that are so well established, and there is so much conservation among the genes, that I think we are in a position now to take this information to other systems to make them grow the way we want them to. I’m living in the South now, and cotton is a prime candidate. We can now think about taking cotton to the next level of domestication through biotechnology,” he said.

Tropical agriculture was the theme of yet another popular symposium. This session included an inspiring overview of BioCassava Plus, a Gates-funded collaborative that aims to create a nutritionally and agriculturally sustainable cassava line for Africa. Also highlighted were transformation methods developed for tropical crops such as banana and papaya and some fundamental biochemical investigations in coffee. Organizer Richard Sayre, from Ohio State University, was pleased with the session. “I think that as a whole, the session had more relevance to plant biology; it brought together the translational part of plant biology as well as some really incredible basic biochemistry.”

Minority Affairs Symposium

The minority affairs symposium kept the spirit of the meeting location alive as four presenters shared their work on crops from the Americas. “We wanted the symposium to blend with the fact that we are in Mexico,” Minority Affairs Committee (MAC) member Adán Colón-Carmona said. “We focused on model systems of the Americas, and that really blended in with what’s going on in science in general and the important questions we are all asking.”

Eleanore Wurtzel, who has an active research group at a primarily Hispanic institution, the City University of New York, shared her work on the biofortification of maize to address vitamin A deficiencies in the developing world. Improvement of the chili pepper was the subject of Neftalí Ochoa Alejo’s talk. Elisa Leyva-Guerrero, a native of Mexico and graduate student at Ohio State University, shared her work on improving the nutritional value of cassava. Alejandra Jaramillo concluded the minority affairs symposium with an introduction to the Piperales and their utility as models to understand flower development beyond the classic ABC model.

Colón-Carmona, who organized the symposium, was pleased to have a lineup of diverse people who are in very different stages of their careers. Leyva-Guerrero was pleased to represent those in the early stages of their career: “That they gave graduate students an opportunity to speak is great,” she said.

Society Initiatives

At the annual Minority Affairs Committee dinner, the 2008 travel grant recipients were recognized before David Burgess, a professor at Boston College who is of Native American descent, took the podium to discuss the challenge of increasing the number of underrepresented minorities in the biological sciences. According to Burgess, the challenge is even greater within the plant sciences, where representation of African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans is especially lacking. Colón-Carmona echoed his concerns.

“We are here not only to hear about science, but also to stimulate discussion about issues such as education and diversity,” said Colón-Carmona. “The numbers are extremely low in the plant sciences, and I think it is important to put it up front and provoke discussion.” Members of the MAC commended the Society for doing just that. “It’s fantastic that the Society has really shown a commitment to increasing diversity and supporting it monetarily by bringing in minority students and faculty to speak,” MAC member Eleanore Wurtzel offered.

Membership Committee Chair Mel Oliver met with graduate student ambassadors to the Society who are kicking off the third year of the program. Frank Dohleman, a graduate student at the University of Illinois who has been an ambassador since the program’s inception, said that participants are looking to expand the program, which aims to increase Society membership.

“The Ambassador program is certainly one that we are continuing to build,” he said. “Not only are we building on the number of student ambassadors, but we also plan to get postdocs and even young professors involved.” Dohleman and his fellow ambassadors are working within their own institutions to increase awareness of ASPB and the benefits of membership.

The Women in Plant Biology Committee held its annual dinner and invited Mexico native Patricia León to share her reflections on balancing family and career in “macho” Mexico. León, who has benefited from the positive influence of female role models such as Estela Sánchez de Jiménez, Virginia Walbot, and Jen Sheen, emphasized the positive aspects of working in Mexico, where extended family can aid women in advancing their careers and fosters the culturally important notions of family and motherhood. “Modern science requires collaborative efforts, and women know how to collaborate,” León said.

She went on to trace the role of science in Mexico beginning in pre-Hispanic times, highlighting the important roles that women have played in science south of the border. León pointed out that the all-important deity of maize, Cinteotl, was a woman.

El Fin

As the meeting drew to a close, ASPB President Rob McClung hosted “Timing is Everything,” which focused on time-dependent plant development or, as McClung put it, “our evolving view of plant clocks.”

But as the clock ticked on, it was time for McClung to extend a big “¡Gracias!” to our Mexican hosts and head to the final party. There, attendees, fueled with the national drink of Mexico from the infamous blue agave, let loose their salsa moves in the hot, humid Mérida night.

“Adios” to Mexico for now; many of us are already hoping that ASPB will go back. For now, it is time to look forward to a big Hawaiian “Aloha” at Plant Biology 2009! Indeed, ASPB President-elect Sally Assmann is looking forward. “The meeting in Mérida was a great success and the meeting in Honolulu next year promises to be just as good,” she began. “In particular, the 2009 meeting will provide excellent opportunities for interactions with our colleagues from Pacific Rim countries, who will be able to attend the 2009 meeting at the discounted registration rates that are available to ASPB members. One special event at ASPB 2009 will be a major symposium on evolution, in honor of the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth.”