On March 14 – 17, the 61st Annual Maize Genetics Conference was held at Inn St. Louis Union Station in US. HZAU attendees were Maize Team members, the postdoctoral fellow Du Yanfang, doctoral students Peng Yong, Jian Yinan, Wang Xi and postgraduate Luo Cheng.
The conference, including four invited lectures, 386 wall paper and 35 presentations, covered a range of topics closely linked to the theme of maize genetics, such as inter/intra communication of plant cells, innovative approaches and challenges, regulation of maize growth and development of functional genes. Jian Yinan and Peng Yong, who were selected from nearly 600 competitors, gave presentations respectively themed “functional genes regulating the growth and development of maize” and “functional genome and evolution of maize”. In addition to the informative presentations, wall papers also played a key role in the conference. Researchers could make use of such exchanges in two afternoons and night sessions to draw inspiration from each other.
In the invited lectures, Professor Sherry Flint-Garica from the Plant Research Center of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) gave a lecture on the process of maize domestication and breeding improvement, and introduced the update, maintenance and operation of the entire corn database, so that more scholars would have a clear understanding of the whole maize industry. Zachary Lippman, a professor from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in New York, who lectured on the mechanisms of epistasia and quantitative variation in plants, said that gene-editing techniques should be applied in basic biological functions and crop breeding. Erik Vollbrecht, a professor from Iowa State University, systematically introduced the whole life of maize, including morphogenesis of stem tips and inflorescence.
Jian Yinan and Peng Yong from the maize team of HZAU respectively gave presentations titled “A new role for ethylene as A development signal controlling the ear length and kernel number in maize” and “Chromatin interactions maps pass reveal based regulation for policy traits in maize”. Du Yanfang, Wang Xi and Luo Cheng presented four wall papers titled “KRN4 controls kernel row number by long-distance regulating UB3 expression in maize”，“QTG-seq accelerates QTL fine mapping trough QTL partitioning and whole-genome sequencing on bulked segregant samples”, and “Single gametophyte sequencing reveals that crossover events differ between sexes in maize”. Besides, they communicated with Professor Sarah Hake and others in related fields.
After the conference, the HZAU delegation was invited by Professor David Jakson from CSHL, New York. They paid a visit to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and had an in-depth discussion on the topics of maize inflorescence development and single cell sequencing of maize young ear. Professor David Jakson is a visiting professor of College of Plant Science & Technology of HZAU. He has contributed a lot for HZAU maize team. He guided them to understand the morphogenesis of maize inflorescence, and introduced the cutting-edge research methods and theoretical knowledge in this field.
Source: http://news.hzau.edu.cn/2019/0330/53856.shtml
Translated by Wang Yining
Supervised by Xie Lujie
