Bidder and Woolhouse Lecturers
In honour of the Harold Woolhouse and George Parker Bidder the Bidder and Woolhouse Lectures are the major plenary lectures of the Society for Experimental Biology.
For a list of previous Bidder and Woolhouse Lecturers please click here.
Bidder Lecture - Wednesday 30th June 2010, 17.30 - 18.30
The Bidder Lecturer for 2010 is Ben Scheres from Utrecht University.
Ben is interested in developmental mechanisms in plants, and in the extent to which these differ between the plant and animal kingdoms. His group investigates pattern formation, cell polarity and cell cycle control. Their aim is to understand at the single cell level the network logic of interacting gene products that determine cell specification, cell division rates and -planes, and organ growth. To this end the group analyzes interactions between many genes that are involved in patterning, cell polarity and cell cycle control in the Arabidopsis root tip.
Ben's talk is entitled 'Multilevel Signaling in Plant Development' and a small summary of the talk is below:
Plants have flexible cell patterning mechanisms to compensate for the lack of cell migration in their growing tips, the meristems. In the root meristem, a set of AP2-domain transcription factors encoded by the PLETHORA genes define the activity of stem cells and their daughters in a process that intimately involves the global signal auxin. A second and simultaneously acting stem cell patterning system involves interactions between GRAS domain transcription factors and the RETINOBLASTOMA pathway. We apply genetics and genomics experiments to untangle the multiple feedback loops that act in both patterning systems and involve not only molecular circuits but also higher-level influences such as shape change. We investigate primary and lateral root formation and we use experimental cycles intertwined with computational modeling to understand our results. The ‘looped’ pathways that are being uncovered are also acting during shoot development in the process of phyllotaxis. I will discuss similarities and differences between patterning systems in roots and shoots and, more generally, in plants and animals.
Woolhouse Lecture - Thursday 1st July 2010, 9.30 - 10.30
The 2010 Woolhouse Lecture will be given by Don Grierson. He received his BSc in Biological Sciences from the University of East Anglia and, after a short period in industry, studied for his PhD in Plant Sciences at Edinburgh. Don is a research professor in the School of Biosciences at the University of Nottingham’s Sutton Bonington Campus, where he has been a staff member for 39 years. He was previously head of Biosciences and pro-vice-chancellor for research at Nottingham from 2003-2007. The Grierson group were the first to clone and identify a range of fruit ripening genes encoding polygalacturonase, pectinesterase, phytoene synthase, and ACC oxidase (the enzyme that converts ACC to the plant hormone ethylene) and were among the first to generate transgenic plants in which traits were altered by silencing specific genes.Recently he has been analyzing aspects of the ethylene perception and signaling chain. Don is interested in, and has experience of, successful collaboration with industry and over a dozen patents were granted for applications of this work, whichwas funded by BBSRC, EU, and other agencies. He has calculated that so far he has spent four years of his life writing grant applications. Don interacted with Harold Woolhouse as an examiner and fellow committee member. He joined the SEB while he was a PhD student and was elected FRS and made OBE in 2000.