ID: 613 / 27

Category: Symposia

Track: Pending

Proposed Symposium Title: ADVANCES IN PHYLOGENOMICS AND SYSTEMATICS OF THE BRASSICACEAE

Abstract: Thanks to Thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana or arabidopsis), the mustard family (Brassicaceae) has become a prominent model group in every aspect of plant biology. IBC 2004 takes place nearly a quarter century after the publication of the arabidopsis genome sequence. The last quarter century has been marked by remarkable advances in phylogenetics, phylogenomics, systematics, and the study of genome evolution in the Brassicaceae (~4000 species in ~350 genera). As next- and third-generation sequencing technologies become more affordable, the number of family-wide comparative and evolutionary analyzes in the Brassicaceae continues to increase. While arabidopsis maintains its position as the most important model in plant biology, several other model species and genera have been established, including Arabidopsis spp., Arabis alpina, Brassica spp., and Capsella spp. The ever-increasing amount of sequence data and the number of crucifer genomes sequenced provide new opportunities for previously unthinkable comparative studies and make the Brassicaceae an ideal model family among flowering plants, for example, for studies of plant development, elucidation of genotype-phenotype interactions, for deciphering the evolutionary pathways leading to an enormous diversity of secondary metabolites that fuel the arms race between plants and pollinators or plants and herbivores, for the evolution of woodiness, and for studies of differently aged whole-genome duplications. The recently established Brassicaceae Tree of Life has enabled even deeper and more sophisticated evolutionary analyzes and confirms the Brassicaceae as one of the most important model families of flowering plants. The goal of this symposium is to document the unprecedented advances in systematics, phylogenomics and evolutionary research in the Brassicaceae over the past quarter century and to discuss some of the most interesting observations and findings.

Speaker 1: Ihsan Al-Shehbaz Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, USA Ihsan.Al-Shehbaz@mobot.org The Brassicaceae then and now - advancement in past two decades

Speaker 2: Kasper Hendriks Naturalis, Leiden, The Netherlands kasper.hendriks@naturalis.nl Reaching for the sky: exploring massive convergent evolution towards woodiness in Brassicaceae

Speaker 3: Cristina Armas Spanish National Research Council, Almeria, Spain cris@eeza.csic.es Eco-physiological and leaf functional features of C3-C4 Moricandia african clade: intra-individual phenotypic plasticity

Topics (Up to three): Phylogenetics and Phylogenomics

Topic 2: Ecophysiology

Topic 3: Comparative Genomics

Justification: Thanks to the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica crops, the Brassicaceae have become an important model family in various fields of plant science. As a result of the widespread application of new technologies (especially affordable whole-genome sequencing) and increasing genomic resources, the importance of the family has been further enhanced by an ever-growing number of comparative and evolutionary studies. Undoubtedly, the Brassicaceae deserve their own symposium at XX IBC.