Evolution of plant sexual diversity

Time: 8:30-9:15 a.m., July 26

Location: Hall 4, 1F, Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center

Flowering plants possess striking sexual diversity despite the hermaphroditic condition of most species. Male and female gametes are deployed in a variety of spatial and temporal combinations at the flower, inflorescence and population level resulting in diverse sexual systems. As Darwin recognized, species with polymorphic sexual systems are especially valuable for evolutionary analysis, and studies of heterostyly and dioecy continue to provide key insights into evolutionary processes.

Spencer C.H. Barrett

Spencer C.H. Barrett is an ecologist and a professor at the University of Toronto. Barrett is one of the world’s leading authorities on the reproductive biology, genetics and evolution of flowering plants. His primary areas of research are the mechanisms responsible for evolutionary transitions in plant reproductive and genetic systems, the evolution and function of floral diversity and the genetics of plant invasions.

Computational morphodynamic approaches to pattern formation in the shoot apical meristem of arabidopsis

Time: 9:15-10 a.m., July 26

Location: Hall 4, 1F, Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center

The shoot apical meristem is the stem cell niche responsible for generating the above-ground parts of flowering plants, including stems, leaves and flowers. Though only a few hundred cells, it has a large number of overlapping but different domains of gene expression. These gene expression domains are dynamic — some genes change their expression relative to appearance of new leaf or flower primordia.

Elliot Meyerowitz

Elliot M. Meyerowitz is currently investigator of Howard Hughes Medical Institute, George W. Beadle professor of Biology, Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, USA. Meyerowitz was a Drosophila melanogaster expert before he became a pioneer of Arabidopsis thaliana research.