DynaMo Mini Symposium: José M Jiménez-Gómez & Franziska Turck

DynaMo is happy to invite to a Mini Symposium with two distinguised guests from Germany.

Programme

10:00
José M Jiménez-Gómez, Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany
Tomato genetics and genomics applied to the study of its domestication

11:00
Franziska Turck, Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany
It’s time to flower: decision making in plants

Abstracts

Dr. José M Jiménez-Gómez:

Tomato genetics and genomics applied to the study of its domestication

Tomato is a model system for studies on domestication. The strong human selection on this crop, the wide variability between sister species and the abundant genetic material available are powerful resources for genetic analyses. In this seminar José M Jiménez-Gómez will explain two projects comparing cultivated tomato and wild ancestors for somewhat novel phenotypes. The first project explores variability in circadian rhythms and the second studies expression variability and its genetic control.

José M Jiménez-Gómez performed his thesis studying the genetics of flowering time in tomato at the Centro Nacional de Biotecnología in Madrid, Spain. During his postdoctoral stage at the University of California Davis he focused on the use of genomics and bioinformatics for the study of natural variation in Arabidopsis thaliana. Since 2010 José directs a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany. His lab integrates bioinformatics and genetics to study the molecular basis of adaptation in plants. A great part of these studies are based on the use of next generation sequencing to identify signatures of natural and artificial selection in model and non-model plant species. Recently, he obtained a position in INRA, Versailles, where he will continue working in these topics.

Dr. Franziska Turck:

It’s time to flower: decision making in plants

An appropriate timing of flowering strongly contributes to fitness and many plants use seasonal information to decide when to transit from a vegetative to a reproductive developmental state. In absence of brain, multi input data integration and decision making can happen at the level of transcription regulation of development regulatory genes. One such key gene in plants is FLOWERINING LOCUS T (FT), which represents the main read-out for photoperiod signals in both, long and short day plants, but also perceives other external and internal cues such as temperature, light quality, stress and age, which may enhance, repress or bypass the response to photoperiod. FT mRNA is produced in the leaves, but the encoded protein moves to the shoot apical meristem where it reprograms gene networks so that plants become irreversibly committed to flowering. Our own work focuses on unraveling the complex transcription regulatory code of FT that involves interplay between transcription factors and chromatin components. The mechanistic details that we are beginning to understand also provide the basis to deduce by which mechanisms regulation may evolve so that plants adapt to different environmental habitats, where the relative weight of regulatory inputs need differentiated adjustment.