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Cherry
Blossoms Welcome Spring Meeting in the Mid-Atlantic Region
A joint meeting of
the Mid-Atlantic Section (MAS) of ASPB and the Seventh Annual Minisymposium
on Plant Biology was held on the College Park campus of the University
of Maryland, just when the cherry blossoms were at their peak. On the
first day, March 31, undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral
fellows gave oral and poster presentations. The quality of the talks was
impressive, making it difficult for the judges to select the two Marsho
Awardees. In the end, Connie Yoon’s presentation, “Molecular
Cloning of JUAN, a Regulator of Arabidopsis Leaf Development,” was
selected as Best Undergraduate Talk. Yoon is working in Dr. Zhongchi Liu’s
laboratory at the College Park campus. Josephine Resnick received Best
Graduate Student Talk on “Reversion-to-Ethylene-Sensitivity (RTE1)
Encodes a Novel Regulator of the ETR1 Receptor.” Resnick is working
on her PhD thesis under Dr. Caren Chang at the University of Maryland,
College Park. The keynote speaker, Dr. Jian-Kang Zhu (University of California,
Riverside) gave an excellent presentation on the role of miRNAs and siRNAs
in abiotic stress responses in Arabidopsis. Crispin Taylor, ASPB’s
executive director, and Brian Hyps, director of public affairs, were at
the meeting to update ASPB members on developments and initiatives at
ASPB and in public affairs related to plant biologists.
The Seventh Annual
Mini-Symposium on Plant Biology was held on Saturday, April 1. This annual
event was organized by ATRIUM (Arabidopsis thaliana Initiative
at the University of Maryland), which comprises interactive laboratories
at Maryland and nearby universities, including Howard University in Washington,
DC. ATRIUM was established in 2000 to advance the University of Maryland’s
strength in plant research and its focus on graduate and undergraduate
training in plant biology. The annual symposium provides a rare opportunity
for plant scientists in the region to interact in a relaxed and informal
atmosphere. The minisymposium this year attracted nearly a hundred participants
from nearby colleges, universities, research institutes, industries, and
granting agencies. Students and postdocs enjoyed the talks, the free lunch,
and the opportunity to meet one-on-one with invited speakers.
Among the speakers
were Don Nuss (University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute), Pam Green
and Blake Meyers (University of Delaware’s Delaware Biotechnology
Institute), Scott Poethig (University of Pennsylvania), Tai-Ping Sun (Duke
University), Hajime Sakai (DuPont), Hong Ma and Teh-hui Kao (Penn State
University), and Robin Buell (TIGR).
For future meetings
and activities of the Mid-Atlantic Section, please see http://www.aspb.org/sections/washington/.
For information about ATRIUM, see http://www.life.umd.edu/labs/atrium/index.html.
Heven Sze
MAS-ASPB Section Representative
hsze@umd.edu
Zhongchi Liu
MAS-ASPB Chair-Elect
zliu@umd.edu
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