The 9th International Student Seminar was held at the University of Kyoto. Students from all over the world attended to present their work, and promote international communication and collaboration.
For me, one of the highlights was presentation of work from the Kyoto lab of Takayuki Kohchi, and his colleague Kimitsune Ishizake. The work here has provided a lead for the development of Marchantia polymorpha as a new system for plant development and physiology, and Synthetic Biology. Takayuki worked on Marchantia plastid gene expression in his early career, and the Kohchi lab is now contributing a raft of new methods for plant culture, high throughput transformation, mutagenesis and developmental analysis in Marchantia.
The labs of Takayuki Kohchi and John Bowman are coordinating in the sequencing of the 280 Mb M. polymorpha genome. Liverworts like M. polymorpha are descendants of the first terrestrial plants. The work in these labs is demonstrating that Marchantia retains an extraordinarily simple genetic architecture, compared to higher plants - where genetic redundancy is pared to a minimum.
Marchantia have a number of advantages for basic studies in developmental biology - there is more information available at:
Marchan Genomics, Kyoto lab pages (Japanese language, registration required)
Marchantia Exchange, for information about Marchantia
Importantly, the same characteristics that make Marchantia an ideal system for plant developemnt studies - make it a potential chassis of choice for Synthetic Biology experiments in plants. For more information see:
Haseloff Lab pages, outlining benefits of the Marchantia system for Synthetic Biology
Above: The fabulous Mrs and Mr Marchantia by Kentaro Ide, Kohchi Lab.