Conifer Microsatellite Workshop: A Conference of Evolution, Ecology and Genomics: June 4-7 at Texas A&M University

Texas A&M Research Foundation, College Station TX

Investigators

Abstract

0122517 Williams The Conifer Microsatellite Workshop at Texas A&M lab is part of an effort to transfer pine microsatellite technology to other labs. The June 4-7 2001 workshop will train investigators, postdocs and graduate students from government, universities and industry. The workshop has the following components: lectures, lab and computational training, a seminar series on case study applications, a roundtable discussion on direction of ecological and evolutionary genomics and a handbook of lab protocols and computational resources. As part of the lab training, the participants will test whether Pinus taeda microsatellites are useful in other conifer species. Instructional quality will be evaluated by the Center of Teaching Excellence. Microsatellites and other sequence-based genomics tools facilitate cross-disciplinary research in evolution, ecological genetics and functional genomics(EEFG). The emerging EEFG paradigm is powerful for the conifer research community because 1) conifers are the oldest extant seed plants, thus EEFG research can make significant inferences to land plant evolution and 2) conifers have highly duplicated, leviathan genomes in need of novel approaches for studying genome organization and function. Nuclear microsatellites from conserved parts of the conifer genome is one of the first specialized tools to be developed for EEFG research in conifers.