17th International Workshop on Plant Membrane Biology, June 5-10, 2016, Annapolis, MD

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

The International Workshop on Plant Membrane Biology (colloquially known as the Plant Membrane Biology Workshop) is a gathering focused on the function and trafficking of plant membrane proteins and the relevance of this knowledge to nutrient management modeling. Since the late 1960s, the Plant Membrane Biology Workshop has been the premier international conference for researchers interested in plant transport and membrane biology. Management of nutrient use in agriculture has become one of the most important global economic and environmental issues. The transport and receptor proteins that reside on plant membranes function on the front line of managing nutrient exchange and buffering environmental stress. Surprisingly, the mechanistic understanding of plant membrane protein function is limited compared to animal systems. Transporters account for nearly 5% of plant genomes and impact plant growth, development, defense and stress tolerance but also human nutrition and health. The goals of the 2016 Workshop are to identify and bring together the top scientists working on plant membrane proteins and to facilitate sharing research results and approaches from experts across the spectrum of membrane protein research with the next generation of scientists who are now graduate students and postdocs. For this Workshop, a particular emphasis is extension of knowledge from biophysicists and structural biologists working at the forefront of protein structure and modeling to the plant community. Established scientists will anchor and chair each session which will feature talks from early-career scientists and talks by students and post-doctoral researchers selected from the abstracts. The International Workshop on Plant Membrane Biology is a meeting organized in a workshop format focused on the function and trafficking of plant membrane proteins and the relevance of this knowledge to nutrient management modeling. The Workshop has a tradition of highly interactive sessions led by senior scientists with a large proportion of the oral presentations made by junior career scientists. The 2016 Workshop has a particular focus on the application of new biophysical and protein structure discoveries to the pressing issues of environmentally responsible management of nutrient use in agriculture. There is also an increased emphasis on signal transduction processes that are associated with plant membranes. Established scientists will anchor and chair each session which will feature talks from early-career scientists and talks by students and post-doctoral researchers selected from the abstracts.