2016 ORNL, INRA and Duke fungal genomics meeting

May 24-25, 2016:  We just finished hosting an excellent meeting with our Plant Microbial Interfaces research team, which includes scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Francis Martin’s mycorrhizal genomics group from INRA.  Two full days of research updates and discussion about future directions for the PMI project, followed by a field trip to Duke Forest to collect sporocarps for genome sequencing.

Francis Martin lecturing on ectomycorrhizae

A highlight of the meeting was a public lecture/seminar by Francis Martin, INRA
‘Unearthing the roots of the mycorrhizal symbioses’

Below is the short talk program from our two day meeting
Rytas Vilgalys: introduction/welcome
Mitch Doktycz: introduction/overview/goals for discussion
Gregory Bonito: Metagenomics of Populus-associated fungal communities based on plant/soil bioassay
Chris Schadt and Allison Veacham: Ongoing and Planned PMI Microbiome, Mycobiome and Metagenomics activities at ORNL
Brian Looney: “Russulaceae as a new addition to the Populus model system”
Jessy Labbé: Ongoing and Planned PMI activities with Populus-fungal interactions
Sunny Liao: Metatranscriptomics of Populus root microbiome interactions: “Phyto-Zero”
Claire Veneault-Fourrey: Fungal mycorrhiza-induced Small Secreted Protein: all effectors of symbiosis?
Francis Martin: Identification of developmental pathways in Laccaria-Populus ectomycorrhiza and other models by RNA-Seq;
Jessie Uehling: Microfluidics approaches for study of fungal-bacterial interactions
Aurélie Deveau: Biofilm formation by the helper-bacteria BBc6 on Laccaria bicolor hyphae
Posy Busby:  leaf endophyte communities and the Populus microbiome
Tim Tschaplinski: Integrating metabolomes of Populus and its fungi
Dan Jacobson: Network analyses integrating everything

After the meetings, visitors were treated to a collecting trip in Duke Forest, including a visit to former FACE research site.