POSTPONED - Junior Researcher Conference - From (in)visible light to visible phenotypes

The “Young Researcher Symposium on Plant Photobiology (YRSPP) 2020” is placed under the scientific agenda: “From (in)visible light to visible phenotypes”.

The conference shall address the question on how photosynthetic organisms perceive light and integrate light perception with environmental cues.

Plants as photoautotrophic organisms rely on their ability to perceive light to optimize their biochemistry, growth, and physiology in order to maximize the photosynthetic performance and protect themselves from unfavorable conditions. For this purpose, plants developed an intricate set of photoreceptors, which allows them to distinguish quality, quantity and direction of the incoming light. For plants, it is therefore essential to integrate signals from the light surroundings with signaling pathways that are dedicated to perceive other environmental factors of abiotic origin (e.g. temperature, water or nutrient availability) or signals that derive from biotic factors (e.g. competition by neighboring plants, herbivory, or pathogenic pressure). Over the last decades our knowledge about those individual signal inputs and the respective plant responses has grown immensely. The big challenge of the next decades will be to interconnect this knowledge, identify central signaling hubs, and understand plant responses to their environment on a holistic level. 

Our research symposium aims to provide a communication platform for young scientists such as PhD students and postdocs. The meeting shall give the participants the opportunity to present their data to an international, scientific audience in a protected and friendly environment, facilitating lively discussions, interactions and knowledge exchange among participants and keynote speakers.